Faking Facebook, Part 1

This is the first of a two-part guest post from my colleague, Susan Barry, who explores some interesting ethical and practical questions in the social media sphere. [--GK]

I recently uncovered a plot to fake Facebook, and I’m still having a hard time unraveling it.

Here’s the short version of what happened: My client, Ms. X, participated in a pilot program being tested by her parent company. The pilot program was designed to make Facebook work better for the individual franchisees by increasing fan count and, ultimately, engagement. The parent company hired a consultant to work on the project, and my client signed up. The consultant, Mr. T, told Ms. X that he would increase her fan count from its current 130 to 1,000 in three months. He also said that her Page wouldn’t work until she got to 1,000 fans.

Ms. X was intrigued. She paid up.

I asked Ms. X what Mr. T’s methodology was to increase the count. Because she didn’t know, she connected me with him. We emailed, and he told me he was using Facebook Sponsored Stories and pay-per-click advertising. I started watching the number of fans of her Facebook Page go up. There were 66 new fans in one day; many more in the next 48 hours.

I started worrying that I had missed something huge on Facebook, some obvious and easy way to drive fan count that Mr. T had mastered and I had not. I was concerned that I had failed to stay in the loop and gotten left behind.

So I started digging.

I looked at every one of the 66 fans that were new that first day. I clicked around on their profiles over and over again, trying to figure out who they were and why they had liked the Page.

What I discovered was that the fans were fake.

All of Ms. X’s new fans had similar problems with their profiles. Here’s what I found:

• There were no current cities or home towns listed. By contrast, I looked at 20 random profiles, and 17 out of the 20 list a town of some sort.
• An unusually high percentage (50% of my sample) identified themselves as liberal Catholics, much more than the general Facebook population.
• No friends showed up on the left side of any of the profiles. (This was pre-Timeline).

Most damning, none of them ever posted anything or completed any activity on Facebook. Their Walls all said, “There are no more posts to show,” and no activity was listed. With people who haven’t posted in a long time, the Wall is blank with a link that says “Older Posts.” With people whose privacy settings are on lock down, you can still see some activity, and there is some indication that privacy settings are preventing you from seeing. It says, “Kelly only shares some information with everyone. If you know Kelly, add her as a friend.”

So, I presented my evidence to Ms. X, who directed me to present it to Mr. T. Mr. T replied by rapidly traveling through the stages of grief.

Denial – You have no idea what you’re talking about. Those are not fake. I’ve done this many times before, and it works, and they are not fake. Also, they aren’t fake.

Anger – If you weren’t so terrible at everything, I wouldn’t have to do this. (Mr. T also hung up on me as part of his anger phase).

Bargaining – Listen, don’t spend too much time worrying about this. It doesn’t matter either way, because we are only working with Ms. X for a short period, and then you can do whatever you want.

Depression – {This stage was handled privately by Mr. T. And by that I mean, he did not feel depressed because he had her money already.}

Acceptance – After he hung up me, Mr. T called back to discuss further. He basically said that, while he didn’t directly purchase fake fans for Ms. X, he doesn’t care whether they are fake or not. In his view, the ends justify the means, because legitimate potential fans will take her more seriously and thus be more likely to join her community with more fans.

So, there you have it.

[END OF PART 1]

What questions would you ask of your client or Mr. T (not this Mr. T)? How would you proceed?