Fake Likes

The horrible Facebook has a problem:

Facebook might be one of the most uptight sites on the internet, requiring everyone to log in with their name and picture and birthday and to generally behave themselves like a nerd in study hall. Yet it still has a slimy underground where people do slimy things, the company conceded Friday. Facebook says it is removing fraudulently generated “likes,” which helped make some businesses on Facebook appear more popular than they really were.

In a post on its security blog, Facebook wrote that it “recently increased our automated efforts to remove [fake] Likes” on business pages. In other words, business pages were previously puffed up thanks to shady clicks from fake or hijacked Facebook accounts.

Facebook is dumping this news at a time when few people will read it, on a Friday before a holiday weekend. And no wonder: The implications are disturbing. Facebook’s advertising system is built on the idea that consumers will be willing to build closer relationships with advertisers, “liking” the advertiser’s pages, reading the advertiser’s status updates, and circulating content about the advertiser to friends. If an advertiser’s popularity is exaggerated by fake “likes,” it makes the business less trustworthy and less likely to be engaged by real consumers.

None of that's surprising. When you can build attention into dollars someone's going make dollars trying to game that. That's advertising. I wouldn't be the #3 provider of Cars 2 hentai without such shenanigans. The Facebook post on it is interesting:
On average, less than 1% of Likes on any given Page will be removed, providing they and their affiliates have been abiding by our terms. These newly improved automated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes. While we have always had dedicated protections against each of these threats on Facebook, these improved systems have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious Likes.
Please like things sincerely or you may be treated with suspicion. Similarly your account may be valuable enough to be stolen and it will be sent around the Facebook environment like like liking things that SHOULD NOT BE LIKED. More interesting to me is the trail of comments that follows any post to the security blog:
What has better comments?

YOUTUBE.
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