Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Fraud [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 412 posts

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#41

Post by JacobJans »

ebabchick wrote: post #38
JacobJans wrote: post #35

I run profitable Facebook marketing campaigns. Here's the problem with this guy's argument: He expects people from Somalia to be as responsive to his content at people from the United States. That makes exactly zero sense. These aren't "likes", these are people. And the people from Somalia apparently don't like his content. But, according to his very own numbers, people from the United States are very responsive. Are…

I think you're misunderstanding the word "fake" in this context. He means they are inauthentic likes, aka likes from real people who don't actually like what they're clicking the Like button on.

The problem is that he's intentionally buying likes from people he KNOWS aren't responsive.

The simple solution? Stop targetting the unresponsive countries.

It's not rocket science. It's actually super-brain-dead obvious.

If you're buying likes from India -- and no Indians are responding to your content -- then why would you keep buying likes from India?

This is stuff you can spend $5 to figure out. It is very, very, very easy to stop targeting the countries that don't respond.

He claims certain countries give him a good response, and certain countries give him no response.

His solution is to stop advertising and complain about "fake likes."

Why doesn't he just stop targeting markets that don't work for him?

Maybe so he can make a link-bait youtube video?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#42

Post by Finster »

JacobJans wrote: post #35

I run profitable Facebook marketing campaigns. Here's the problem with this guy's argument: He expects people from Somalia to be as responsive to his content at people from the United States. That makes exactly zero sense. These aren't "likes", these are people. And the people from Somalia apparently don't like his content. But, according to his very own numbers, people from the United States are very responsive. Are…

If the people didn't like his content, then why did they "like" it?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#43

Post by 0x0 »

JacobJans wrote: post #41
ebabchick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding the word "fake" in this context. He means they are inauthentic likes, aka likes from real people who don't actually like what they're clicking the Like button on.

The problem is that he's intentionally buying likes from people he KNOWS aren't responsive. The simple solution? Stop targetting the unresponsive countries. It's not rocket science. It's actually super-brain-dead obvious. If you're buying likes from India -- and no Indians are responding to your content -- then why would you keep buying likes from India? This is stuff you can spend $5 to figure out. It is very, very,…

He was buying likes only from the US and he was still getting fraudulent likes from profiles that liked thousands of pages.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#44

Post by hayksaakian »

JacobJans wrote: post #37
j_s wrote: post #20

Can Facebook ads be targeted at users with less than a certain number of likes?

I think this gets to the fundamental problem with buying likes: You're competing with all the other pages the user has liked. The value of a like depends on this -- and it should definitely be factored into the price you pay. Hopefully this will happen some time in the future!

that might just be the best solution to this problem.

weigh based on the value of one like among however many a given user has

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#45

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

kpao wrote: post #12

We learned this last year when we started paying for ads on Facebook. Our app is in a niche market (Flight Simulator for mobile devices), I assumed that very little people would click, but we saw a constant increase of about 1K likes/day. After looking at the analytics, I decided to cut Brazil and India. We had a huge disconnect between our App Store country data and those ads, and we also saw no noticeable change in…

It shouldn't matter if ads are priced on the basis of ROI instead of per-user (which it is). The ads are only as cheap as they are because they're being farmed, if they weren't they would be much more expensive.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#46

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

JacobJans wrote: post #41
ebabchick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding the word "fake" in this context. He means they are inauthentic likes, aka likes from real people who don't actually like what they're clicking the Like button on.

The problem is that he's intentionally buying likes from people he KNOWS aren't responsive. The simple solution? Stop targetting the unresponsive countries. It's not rocket science. It's actually super-brain-dead obvious. If you're buying likes from India -- and no Indians are responding to your content -- then why would you keep buying likes from India? This is stuff you can spend $5 to figure out. It is very, very,…

You didn't watch the video...

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#47

Post by EA »

JacobJans wrote: post #41
ebabchick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding the word "fake" in this context. He means they are inauthentic likes, aka likes from real people who don't actually like what they're clicking the Like button on.

The problem is that he's intentionally buying likes from people he KNOWS aren't responsive. The simple solution? Stop targetting the unresponsive countries. It's not rocket science. It's actually super-brain-dead obvious. If you're buying likes from India -- and no Indians are responding to your content -- then why would you keep buying likes from India? This is stuff you can spend $5 to figure out. It is very, very,…

He specially addressed that at 05:25 into the video. And he spent $20 instead of $5. He marketed to the US, CAN, AUS, and the UK and analyzed the new likes. The likes appeared to come from fake users.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#48

Post by protomyth »

Would it change anything about the problem if the initial distribution of a post would favor people with fewer overall likes and people who had previously engaged? It seems like a win for the poster, but a loss for Facebook since they wouldn't get more money for payment to promote the post.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#49

Post by rhizome »

protomyth wrote: post #48

Would it change anything about the problem if the initial distribution of a post would favor people with fewer overall likes and people who had previously engaged? It seems like a win for the poster, but a loss for Facebook since they wouldn't get more money for payment to promote the post.

FB already has the money, why should they care about engagement? What is the value proposition for that if goodwill is not a primary driver? That is, is there any indication that FB isn't simply penny-wise and pound-foolish?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#50

Post by haffi112 »

capkutay wrote: post #40
kzrdude wrote: post #5

Be sure to watch through to the end for the conclusion! I'll summarise: Click farms like every page they can, far more than just the pages they were paid to like; the theory is that they will evade detection this way. Paying for "legitimate" facebook exposure will expose you to the click farms as well, and that will be the absolute majority of your gained likes. In this way facebook ads give a huge, but useless, gain…

I doubt there's any trivial solutions to this, but one simple scenario would be to limit the amount of 'likes' an account can have..but that could also cause FB to implode.

Well, there is one solution which wasn't mentioned in the video, get the bots to like your posts so they get visibility leading to actual users seeing them.
Post reply on HN