Like-farming describes the various methods spammers, even criminals, use to attract followers to their Facebook pages, by deceiving or exploiting them.
Basically, any Facebook page that lies or exploits you into engaging with their posts and luring you into following them is, by definition, a like-farming page. You can learn more about like-farming here.
And in the latest type of like-farming, we’re now seeing posts claiming they need to accumulate “500k likes, 200k shares and 10k comments” (numbers will vary) in order for something to happen. It’s the latest method like-farming spammers are exploiting to lure people into engaging in spammy posts.
Like-farming can take on various guises (e.g. fake giveaways, comment Amen = 1 prayer) but the latest trend is to assert that someone, or something, has agreed to carry out a desired action on the proviso that a particular post can accumulate a certain number of engagement (shares, comments, likes reactions)
For example, take a look at this post that went viral in 2016, below.
In this instance, the like-farming post claimed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had agreed to a Facebook user that he would remove Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from the social network website providing a screenshot of him making the challenge was shared over 500,000 times.
Of course the conversation was fake. Zuckerberg made no agreement, but this didn’t stop other pages or profiles from using similar fake conversations with high profile people to attract followers. Other examples included another fake conversation with Zuckerberg, only this time he was promising to help end the Yulin dog meat festival if a post accumulated enough shares, and another claimed that DJ Guv would perform in someone’s living room.
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Plenty of others have begun to go viral too. Ultimately it is just an attempt to lure people into following pages or profiles on Facebook. Sometimes these pages or profiles are harmless – just belonging to teens who crave social media attention, and luring people into following them is one such way to achieve that. However other pages can be more malicious, publishing links to spammy marketing webpages or even malicious websites where any number of online scams can occur when visited.
When it comes to spotting these scams, common sense is usually enough to debunk any such posts. Be aware that there are people out there publishing fake conversations with celebrities or public entities making such claims, and they’re just not true.
