Fake still image “video” memes now using floating triangles to trick Facebook

Those looking to game Facebook’s algorithms with still images posing as videos have fought back against a recent Facebook update, with bizarre floating triangles.

Let’s put this into context briefly. Facebook love videos, and has been gearing up for some time to increase the visibility and reach of videos across their website. This in turn encourages popular Facebook pages to increase the number of videos they publish, because they’ll ultimately reach more people.

But not everyone is capable of producing great quality videos. So what to do if you’re not in the video production business but still want those extra views? Turn still images into videos, of course! We’ve previously discussed it here. Basically those looking to game Facebook’s video-loving algorithms would take a still image and use video software to make that image into a 20-second-or-so video. Nothing happens in the video, mind. You click play, and it’s 20 seconds of an image that doesn’t do anything.

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It’s dishonest, really, but it’s “black hat” marketing. It’s inevitable that users are going to do this when Facebook prioritize video. In response, Facebook tweaked its code to recognise still images posing as videos, in order to reduce their visibility. Basically, now Facebook knew if a “video” didn’t have any moving parts and was really just a still image.

But those looking to trick Facebook have fired back, and now we get weird moving, floating triangles! Essentially, this means weird floating semi-transparent triangles are overlaid onto the still image (using simple software) to create the illusion of “moving parts” when – in reality – it’s still just a still image.

See this screenshot below –

Can Facebook do some more tweaks to recognise this cheap trick? We’ll have to wait and see.