An image is spreading on Facebook of a girl in a hospital bed along with the caption that urges users to like and share to pray for a girl with brain cancer.
The post is being spread by a number of Facebook pages, most prolifically a page called Jesus Loves Us which has accumulated nearly a quarter million shares at the time of writing. An example of how it appears on Facebook can be seen below –
BECAUSE I HAVE BRAIN CANCER NOBODY WANTS TO PRAY FOR ME.
PLEASE 1 LIKE AMEN and SHARE
The above post is a typical example of exploitative like-farming, meaning the people who publish such content are merely looking to lure Facebook users into engaging with their posts in order to attract followers.
Needless to say, the post has nothing to do with the girl depicted in the photo nor anyone related to her. Instead, her photo has been taken by like-farming spammers and used for the purpose of attracting followers to their pages. The girl in the photo is then 13 year old Bella Acierno, who was pictured in 2015 after a second surgery to treat a brain tumor. To reiterate, she has nothing to do with the request to like and share her photo.
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In one instance, the photo was posted by the like-farming page Jesus Loves Us, which is a demonstration as to how like-farming spammers are using religion as a niche to deceive users. Despite the religious overtones on the page, the page is designed only to attract followers using exploitation and deception.
Like-farmers who attract followers to their pages can sell the pages to marketing companies or use their popular pages as a launchpad for more serious Internet scams.
These types of exploitative posts have been around for years, and it’s time that Facebook users stopped interacting with such posts, since by doing so you are only benefiting immoral spammers by helping them profit by stealing photos of sick children.
For more information on Facebook like-farming, read our post here.