UK mum attempts to get Facebook to remove vile like-farming posts of her son

A mother in the UK is desperately trying to get photos of her son taken down from Facebook after like-farmers have stolen them to obtain likes and shares.

We are often covering the practice known as Facebook like-farming.It’s the process scammers use to get followers for their Facebook pages and likes and shares for their posts, using a combination of deception and exploitation. Like-farming can be particularly depraved, for example callously exploiting photos of cancer survivors for likes, or photos of disabled people.

We’ve previously discussed about like-farming scammers have sank pretty low in their quest for likes, shares and followers.

Facebook has a chequered history of being rather lax when it comes to actually taking down such posts and pages, even when the people depicted in the photos being exploited come forward and demand they be taken down. And this is the case for UK mother Sarah Allen who discovered to her horror this month that her 3 year old son Jasper had become the latest victim to like-farming.

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In 2016, Jasper had been diagnosed with an extremely serious case of chickenpox, and his story (and his photos) hit the mainstream media (including an appearance on the UK’s This Morning) after he was initially refused admittance to see the family doctor by the GP receptionist.

As is typically the case with like-farming scams, those operating them had stolen Jasper’s photos from the Internet and used them to attract likes & shares on Facebook by claiming the social networking website would donate money for each like, share and comment their post accumulated. The like-farmers also lied about Jasper’s condition, asserting instead that the child suffered from cancer.

This little baby has cancer and he need money for surgery
Facebook has decided to help by giving
1 Like = 2 dollars . 1 Comment = 4 dollars . 1 Share = 8 dollars,
Please dont scroll down without typing Amen

A quick search revealed that Jasper’s photos – above – appeared a number of times on Facebook, despite mother Sarah’s pleas to Facebook to remove them –

I have friends and family call up thinking Jasper actually has cancer. It is really upsetting and distressing. I’ve even seen people commenting on the post offering to transfer donations.

I think it’s disgusting. They are scammers. They can’t be real human beings, because no person would think this is OK. They are making up lies.

Perhaps most shockingly, after Sarah commented on one of the posts demanding they remove her son’s photos, the page just liked her comment.

And most frustratingly of all is Facebook’s typically flippant response to Sarah’s many reports. The social networking website eventually responded by saying they removed one profile that uploaded the photos, but searches soon reveal the same photos are being uploaded by other newly created pages in an impossible game of whack-a-mole. Facebook could just ban the photos from being uploaded in the first place using their state-of-the-art image fingerprint technology. Buy they don’t.

At the time of writing, many of Jasper’s photos remain on Facebook, and in at least one instance – on a post published by popular like-farming account Pooran Singh – they have accumulated over a million shares.

UPDATE: Since the date of this article, the BBC interviewed Sarah and Faceboko has said they will launch an investigation. Many of the like-farming pages that posted the photos have since been taken down.