Facebook is probably the biggest online consumer base readily available to any business. Therefore, introduction of Facebook pages for Businesses was a great idea to begin with. After the ‘Like’ button came into existence, popularity became just a number which translated into the number of likes you have on your page. Facebook has now revealed that many business pages have likes through fake or hijacked Facebook accounts. Although Facebook has never asked for money for likes, some shady advertisers use bots and fake accounts to increase page likes. More on this after the break.
This decreases the trustworthiness of the business in question as it does not have the actual user base shown by the number of likes. Therefore Facebook has started automated removal of these fake likes. It is estimated that this would affect on an average about one percent of the likes of a page. But the story does not end here, marketers and business owners are up-in-arms against this decision as they will loose valuable likes on their pages which is generally what lures people to their products.
If fraudulent accounts and likes increase on Facebook, this would mean decrease the potential of Facebook as an advertisement platform. Legitimate advertisers will be vary whether the likes are due to real people which will help increase their business or just bots or fake accounts which will amount to nothing. Although this is a good step by Facebook by nipping the problem in the bud, but fraudsters are using Facebook as well. In time they will get better at dodging Facebook filters as well. For Facebook users, this is the future of Spam.
