61–70 of 177 posts
In 2004, two czech graduate created massive campain for fake hypermarket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Dream
"Facebook says it uses pattern recognition to find and eliminate click farms and accounts that exist solely to like pages. Since March, says Facebook, it’s “notified 200,000 Pages that we’ve protected their accounts from fake likes.” I love the way they put this: “Protected,” as if the companies hadn’t paid for them." This may be more accurate than the author of this article believes. I've read elsewhere that precise…
Google deals with this re:bad links. Once they started penalizing, it became a new tactic to suppress competition.
For a new local business who is never going to get a HN or /. effect, or get some "viral buzz" from the cool kids, buying a few thousand can be a way to get to perceived neutrality. Enough likes or followers that they're no longer clicked away from for being "suspiciously" unloved.
Fake reviews on the other hand are much more directly fraudulent. Mind I'm surprised anyone at all still trusts online reviews, apart from negative ones!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the feeling having NoScript can be more annoying that not having it so I have been procrastinating installing it...
I use "medium mode" in uBlock[1], which causes only 3rd-party scripts/frames to be blocked, not 1st-party ones. I could read the article fine, I had no idea there were issues with overlays with it, and it otherwise rendered fine. Not blocking 1st-party scripts remove a lot of the tediousness of blocking scripts by default. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
As an entrepreneur, I became so disappointed with this article about 60% of the way through, that I had to stop reading. When the author started getting phone calls on his burner phone from people wanting to hire his van, he should have manned up, stuck with this damn business, and written instead about bootstrapping. With stats like the ones he reported, he should have stuck with Freakin' Awesome Karaoke Express eve…
All downhill from here. Grab your popcorn.
That was a good write-up. Thing is, this works. Even (or especially) for startups. Only if to kickstart the hype a bit. Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there? From the article: And these days, which is more real: a fake business with a real website or a brick and mortar business with no…
I remember reading a research paper on how liking a post for initial two or three time could greatly increase the probability of the post actually taking off. I can't find the exact paper now though, so if anyone can remember reading a similar one, can you please link it?
You don't have to pay for it, btw. There are sites you can post to in order to attract people that will just like/follow your stuff for free. It doesn't take much searching to find them. You won't get the same numbers, but if you're on a budget, it works.
Seems to be all legit accounts, so presumably far safer from any FB fake detection algorithms. Just don't expect them to buy your service!
"Facebook says it uses pattern recognition to find and eliminate click farms and accounts that exist solely to like pages. Since March, says Facebook, it’s “notified 200,000 Pages that we’ve protected their accounts from fake likes.” I love the way they put this: “Protected,” as if the companies hadn’t paid for them." This may be more accurate than the author of this article believes. I've read elsewhere that precise…
I would like to add that if they would punish the businesses, this could of course be abused: if I have to pay $50 to have my competitor have serious spam issues with Facebook, possibly resulting in a penalty, that is some serious damage I could do.
I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic about being the first Twitter follower, or the 6th "Like", and something scary, particularly for a local business, about vouching for something you're not really 100% sure on. Writing the 4th 5 star review is a lot easier than the 1st one, and it's easy, and more anonymous, to be the 45th Like.
I don't support these services, and think we need good heuristics to stop them, but I can totally see why even an early influx of a few fake followers and reviews would "seed the pot", and be worth way more to a business's eventual health than $20-40.