A Facebook profile called Sowter Daisy is proving itself to be a prime example demonstrating how like-farming spammers exploit both disabled people and the Facebook community to serve their own means.
Like-farming, for those that don’t know, refers to the process of acquiring social media engagement (shares, likes etc.) and accumulating followers for your profile or page, by using either deceptive or exploitative techniques.
One popular example of this is by posting photos of disabled people and asking readers to type “amen”. We discuss that is more detail here.
And the Facebook profile Sowter Daisy, which at the time of writing as accumulated over 250,000 followers using these techniques, does exactly that. Every single day.
The profile is full of images of disabled women, all posted with captions such as –
Everybody is ashamed of me because i am disabled, If you are not ashamed please Like & Share
Type amen
As is typical with like-farming scams, it is extremely doubtful that the women in the photos have any idea that their images are being used to lure engagement and attract followers for this Facebook profile. They’ve likely been stolen from various places across the Internet and used without permission.
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And if this method of like-farming couldn’t be any more exploitative, many of the photos apparently depicting disabled women have actually been digitally altered, and actually show women who have had their limbs “photoshopped” out.
These photos imploring readers to type “amen” of posted day after day, amongst other variants of like-farming posts.
And it works. The page has accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers, most the result of these posts going viral as thousands upon thousands of social media users share, like or comment “amen” on the posts. The popularity of the page has even given rise to a petition for Facebook to remove the like-farming profile.
The number of followers the profile has managed to acquire gives it the ability to reach thousands of Facebook users. While at the time of writing we haven’t seen the profile post any links to any serious scams, given the morals the owner of the profile clearly lacks, this is certainly not out of the question.
So another reminder to our readers – don’t interact or engage with these posts. Don’t type amen. Don’t like comment or share. It’s just exploitation.
