An estimated one-third of USA Today's 15.2 million Facebook followers were removed because they belonged to fake accounts, per a report from the company. Executives at its parent company Gannett said Thursday that millions of its remaining followers are linked to fake accounts, too, so they asked the FBI to investigate.
Why now: The company reported receiving a recent influx of millions of followers that accounted for half of its total following. They continue to receive 1,000 fake followers each day, per the company. Weeks ago, Facebook said there was a "major spam operation" on the social network that resulted in countless fake accounts being set up to engage with businesses' pages to appear legitimate, with the goal of scamming and spamming their users.
Catfish trends: The accounts largely listed users locations from Bangladesh, India, Egypt and Pakistan, so Gannett said it will now block users from Bangladesh primarily, as it is believed to be the primary source of this spamming effort. Another common theme: Photos of attractive, young women who claim to work for the New York Yankees.
Fake followers and traffic is something that is becoming more and more popular in today's Attention Economy.
As I have mentioned in a post in the past. This is a problem that today's Social Media's can't handle properly. With an increased awareness of TOR networks and proxy's to hide your IP roots when working on these "fake traffic" services there is probably as many Fake Accounts today as real ones that the big social media platforms have not noticed or just let be and pretend to be real to appeal to the shareholders.
Why would anything be different here?
Let's say fake accounts do make it through, opposite of the other Social Media sites everything here is recorded on the blockchain, open to anyone.
Imagine how many Cat Fish or Fake Account Scenario's happen on the daily that people fall for and can end up losing either their time or money getting tricked into doing something. It probably happens so often that the people working for these Media sites won't ever have the time to deal with unless reported, even if they on their end could quickly check some logs and realize user X is being Cat Fished by someone.
Here, anyone can check the blockchain if suspicious about a users activities. The account one holds and "levels up" in reputation can't be deleted or copied. Let's say Cat Fish X has been on a Cat Fishing spree and when he is on his 3rd victim trying to do the same thing - everything leaves a trace on the blockchain. If 1 user suspects something, they spread the suspicion further to more readers and they can work together on finding out what exactly is going on. No need to ask "support staff" or wait around for having someone attend to your harassment. Sooner or later they will find out the truth. They say people are good at noticing patterns and behaviors.
There is a bigger incentive here to not be a Troll/Cat Fish
If someone starts trolling accounts here it can very much mean that others who do not enjoy reading that sort of stuff decide to take action and flag/mute the Troll. This would cause a loss of reputation of the account and its chances at gaining that again would be slim (like we saw happen with the matrixdweller account). Thus the Troll losing hypothetical monetary gain and reputation is not something they would be as okay with as if they, let's say get one of their 5 fakebook accounts banned. Here it takes time to gain reputation again and sooner or later it will not be worth it for them to continue trolling in the long run.
✔️ Young sexy woman picture
✔️ "hi, I'm single"
✔️ near instant response
✔️ says she likes you after 2 message
Looking at how steemit reputation and Steem power works. I totally get how it deters fake and spam accounts. It's just simply isn't worth the time and effort to register through Steemit's human verification procedure. Of course there always will be loopholes to exploit but that is the nature of progress, scammers try and game the system and devs make it harder to game. Almost like a Formula 1 version cat and mouse and each iteration makes it less worth it to scam or spam.
And ideally at the end of the day, we'll have a thriving social ecosystem where anyone who makes good content is rewarded.
Oups! Last July, young sexy woman picture was voted by the whales. It excited them!
My my.. Catfishes. But like what I think, if people likes it, they upvote it.
Very well put!
also awesome comments in general from you I've noticed! Thanks! :)
Make sure to remember to nominate users on Comment of the Day Contest if you see other comments that haven't been rewarded properly!
Thanks! I guess.. haha!
Well I believe that my input matters, even if its just to the one person who will read it. And so i often find myself only writing down the best my mind can think of and edit it down to what i feel at the time sums my points and delivers my message, whether explicit or implicit.
Of course! i'll be on the lookout for great meaningful comments and send them a gift of my nomination. Although I have to stete early that it wont be an easy task, I'll only select them using the same criteria in which i judge my own writings. I hope i don't come off as arrogant, haha!
5 millions hot babe from Bangladesh who working for New York Yankees...
What not believe?
The reason why a lot of these spam accounts are coming from poor 3rd world countries is because someone is paying them to make lots of spam account or they are bots that can easily randomly generate information and create a fb account or they are trying to scam they're fans it's probably most likely to be both
Yeah, it's like they are profiting off both.
Say for instance someone at USA today paid all these users anonymously to boost their follower amount. They get paid for it, then they double-dip and decide while they are at it to try and scam people as well.
As someone from a 3rd world country, I can assure you not everyone is spamming / bot here.
I'm sorry I know know that but I also know there is a lot scammers from there but I'm not surprised if money is tight
Such a great read.
Have only recently joined - and to see this refreshing "blockchain" social network is very interesting.
I thought nothing was different. Oh man, the things we learn, right? :)
Almost always the use of
Photos of attractive, young womenxD
Interesting posting....^^
Thanks, glad you found it interesting. :)
steem on !!! thanks for your detail report !!