One of Facebook's most prominent ways of making money is the "Promote Your Page" option. It's important to company and organizations because the number of "Likes" gives the perception of how popular a website is. The number of Likes also gives administrators an idea of how many people might view their posts, but these days, it appears the system has failed, and instead of benefiting clients, Facebook appears to be the only beneficiary in what could ultimately be the biggest scam on the Internet.
A YouTube user who goes by the name Derek Muller is a victim of this problem of advertising for Likes on Facebook. Apparently, after promoting his page, Muller realizes that the majority of the Likes he got were bogus. This number is above the 80,000 mark, which should give you an idea how extensive this problem is. Furthermore, out of this large pool of persons who Liked his Facebook page, only 1 percent managed to engage with his posts on a monthly basis.
That's a big problem, because if a page has over 80,000 Likes, which should be from people who are interested in the topic of the page, then a 1 percent click through should be seen as a huge problem.
According to Muller, click farm individuals in countries such as Egypt, India, the Philippines, and Pakistan, along with a host of other countries, are clicking fake Likes on a multitude of pages, and Facebook is benefiting indirectly from this problem. Muller believes that people from the named countries click on every "Like" button they come across, which ends up making it difficult for page administrators to engage with real users due to dilution of the value of a Like.
In the end, administrators who pay Facebook for Likes could be damaging their own brand, while Mark Zuckerberg and company take home a big paycheck per month.
Why click farmers click so many Likes?
Well, if Muller is correct, the reason for this is to cover their tracks. When a click farmer clicks Like for multiple clients, he also tends to click on innocent pages to help cover his tracks and stay off Facebook's radar. It's a problem, one that might not be easy for Facebook to fix. Furthermore, it is likely the social network knows about this issue, but it won't tell anyone, as it might be forced to refund money to advertisers. In addition, Facebook would also be forced to admit it knows of the issue and has done nothing to alert users, or to rectify it.
Muller came to the conclusion of where the fake Likes are coming from by checking which country of followers are more engaged with his posts. As it stands, the countries named above had almost zero percent engagement, and to make matters worse, the persons from these countries make up the majority of the likes on his page.
Think about it, and you will realize how shocking this is. If true, it would mean that advertising for Likes on Facebook is a fool's errand. But then again, advertisers are not at fault here, as they trust Facebook to deliver quality and real Likes.
"Fake likes don't help us. For the last two years, we have focused on proving that our ads drive business results and we have even updated our ads to focus more on driving business objectives," a Facebook spokesperson told the Huffington Post. "Those kinds of real-world results would not be possible with fake likes."
