If someone you know says they “like” a certain product or business on Facebook, it turns out they may not like it at all. In addition, they may be completely unaware that their name is being used in an endorsement.
I check Facebook every day to see what my friends and co-workers are posting on the site. There are photographs of children, grandchildren, people attending concerts or a sporting event, on vacation at a graduation or wedding. Sometimes people comment on the news of the day or urge others to watch a certain TV show or read a news article they found interesting.
But for months, a certain friend of mine has appeared by name as “liking” Chevrolet. I think different types of Chevys have been touted, but my wife claims most of the postings have been about the multi-flex sliding rear seat in the Chevrolet Equinox.
“You’ll never have to worry about enough space for your passengers,” the copy says above a large photograph of a young couple taking what appear to be bags of groceries out of the rear compartment as the vehicle sits in their yard next to a patio.
I found myself wondering why my friend loves Chevrolets so much that she would tout them with such regularity. I confess to wondering if she had found a way to make money on the side by simply “liking” a car manufacturer on Facebook.
So the other day, I telephoned her and asked the question. She seemed completely dumbfounded. Said she didn’t know what I was talking about and to her knowledge had never “liked” random ads for anything.
I took a screen image of the Facebook page with her Chevy “like” on it and sent it to her via email.
“This makes me really angry,” she responded. “I feel like Michael Jordan.”
The mention of Jordan was a reference to his lawsuit against a now-defunct grocery chain that had used his name and likeness as part of an advertisement that included a coupon for steaks. Jordan won millions of dollars claiming that the store did not have his permission to use his name or fame to sell a product and that he typically gets $10 million or more before endorsing anything.
After my friend’s response to the Facebook posting, I checked the Internet and discovered that there are a lot of people out there complaining that their name has appeared on the social media site as “liking” things that they never endorsed.
My friend and her husband do own a couple of Chevrolets, purchased from a used-car dealership but informed me that they don’t recall signing any paperwork that would have authorized using their name to tout the cars. And neither of their vehicles is the one featured on the Facebook post, the Equinox.
For those unfamiliar with Facebook, the most popular social media site in the world, items posted by people always have a line at the bottom that has the words “Like,” “Comment” and “Share” and by clicking on them you can do any of those three things. It’s common for people to make a comment about a friend’s posting or to tap “like” about a photo of a cute puppy or baby or to share the Facebook message with friends through the Internet. Happens every day, probably millions of times.
And there are people who will write glowingly about a visit to a local restaurant or a neighborhood tavern, and other people on Facebook will say they “like” that, with their names appearing on the Facebook posting.
This being America, I suppose I should have been aware that any time something is as successful as Facebook, someone is going to find a way to use it, or misuse it, for their benefit.
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“Fake likes” are a problem, according to Facebook, and producing them, I gather, has become something of a cottage industry. I emailed Facebook about my friend’s problem, and the company’s media department replied with several pages of information.
“When we refer to fake likes on Facebook,” one item said, “we’re explicitly referring to external services that sell packages of likes from fake accounts or people without real intent by offering a certain number of likes for a flat fee. Fake-like peddlers tempt Page (administrators) with offers to ‘Buy 10,000 likes” or other similar schemes.”
So apparently there are people who have sold legitimate businesses on the idea of paying for “likes” on their Facebook pages in hopes that people searching their business name will see what appears to be massive consumer support.
I’m guessing from the Facebook corporate response that there are some businesses that sell “legitimate likes” because the previous paragraph refers to people who do this with no real intent of offering the likes (shame on them).
Facebook states that “we work hard to ensure that the connections between businesses and people are genuine and meaningful and want to share the resources we have to help you understand where fake likes come from, the defenses we have in place and the tips on how to safeguard yourself from fraudulent activity.”
Most of the information I was sent seems aimed at businesses. I did learn from the material that there are “click farms” in which people with real accounts on Facebook are paid to manually like specific pages.
So some of your trusted friends — who are claiming to like a certain beer, soda pop, hot dog or brand of dog food — may actually be making money to like those products. I guess that’s the free enterprise system, and if you are willing to sell your name to enhance the bottom lines of corporations you’re simply entering a realm previously restricted to movie stars, TV celebrities and professional athletes. Power to the people, I say.
But then there are the fake accounts that do not represent real people and are generated for the primary purpose of liking pages. I’m guessing this may have started by independent contractors or businessmen who realized pretty quickly that getting a lot of likes on Facebook could be a profitable enterprise.
They probably saw no reason to share the wealth with thousands of people when they could produce fake people to generate likes that served the same purpose.
And then someone realized that by installing malware in computers, they could get more likes for their pages. And some folks infected Facebook accounts with malware, causing the account to like pages without the knowledge of the account owners, according to Facebook.
Again, I emphasize that I would be among the last people you would ask for advice on the use of social media. But I’m guessing that someone with ill intent sends out something like a cute video or photo of a dog, cat or baby on Facebook, thousands of people hit “like” to demonstrate they’re sensitive souls who appreciate such images and the next thing they know their names are appearing on endorsements for products all over the world.
Be assured that Facebook is looking out for your interests, sort of.
“Don’t buy fraudulent likes that hurt your business long term,” Facebook warns in its literature, which, as I said, seems to have a heavy emphasis on commercial accounts.
Facebook warns that while page administrators (people who control the Facebook pages of businesses) may think fraudulent likes are a useful tool to increase the perception of how popular their page is, “the likes end up being a detriment to the pages and admins that purchase them.”
That may be true, but I wonder how many page administrators have gotten big bonuses from employers who never realized that the huge increase in “likes” was totally bogus. I also wonder how many of those corporate CEOs, or small businessmen, would have cared.
“Fraudulent activity on Facebook has always been a tiny fraction of overall activity on Facebook,” Facebook states. “We’ve worked hard so that most people on Facebook don’t encounter this sort of thing at all. Even so, we continue to adapt and improve the methods we use to prevent fake likes because scammers are constantly evolving and testing new methods to try to get around our spam prevent systems.”
Here’s something you can do whenever you see that someone has that “liked” a product on Facebook. Call them. And if you don’t know the person, don’t believe it.