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Facebook fake “likes”: Social media giant vows to “aggressively get rid” of scam artists
Facebook says it will "aggressively get rid of" companies and brands paying for fake "likes" on the social media site.
Brands buy "likes" from fake pages from websites such as buy-facebooklikes.co.uk and socialmadness.co.uk in order to make their products seem more popular.
Facebook has already won nearly $2bn (£1.25bn) in legal judgements against the spammers and scammers.
Matt Jones, Facebook's "integrity engineer", wrote on a blog; "We have a strong incentive to aggressively get rid of fake likes because businesses and people who use our platform want real connections and results, not fakes".
He said:
The spammers behind fake likes have one goal — to make money off of Page owners without delivering any value in return. They make their profit by promising and generating likes to Facebook Page administrators who typically don't understand that fake likes won't help them achieve their business goals.Fake like peddlers tempt Page admins with offers to “buy 10,000 likes!” or other similar schemes. To deliver those likes, the scammers often try to create fake accounts, or in some cases, even hack into real accounts
Last week Facebook's $19bn takeover of WhatsApp was finally completed after winning EU regulatory approval. WhatsApp chief executive and co-founder Jan Koum has become an official member of Facebook's board.
Facebook's share price has been unmoved in morning trading today, hovering around its opening price of $77.4 per share: