Facebook keeps increasing its legal action as opposed to organizations misusing the systems, this time starting a couple of new proceedings against sellers of fake engagements and likes on social media platforms.
According to Facebook:
“Today, we filed separate lawsuits in federal court against four individuals providing services intended to artificially inflate likes and followers of Instagram accounts, a practice known as fake engagement. Defendants Sean Heilweil and Jarrett Lusso, from New York, provided their service using the website boostgram.com. Defendants Laila Abou Trabi and Robin Abou Trabi, based in Dubai, used the website instant-fans.com.”
Both websites are as they seem, elusive, fake engagement on marketplaces that you may pay to inflate your social media presence artificially.
The tagline on the Boostgram website says “Don’t be basic, be awesome”, it invites people to get “real” engagements and followers at a small price.
There is no way to put it, these websites are trash, and they will definitely destroy your social presence. Not just fake engagement and followers will never be useful, or definitely, purchase anything from your company, yet such services also weaken your analysis, making all your information useless. Once they are detected, they will also destroy your name among your competitors, and may as well get your profile suspended completely.
Of course, it may get appealing to increase your audience to present a bigger presence on social media platforms, particularly if you are starting out. However, the cost might be miserable, it is also not worth the risk in general or damage caused.
Considering this, it is great to see Facebook keeping to clampdown on these fake followers and engagement sellers. And that, as stated, it is progressively been planning to do more in the past year.
In the previous year, New York’s Attorney General stated that selling fake social media likes, engagements, and followers are basically illegal. Related to the particular actions of Devumi company, that has gone out of operation. Since that result, Facebook has utilized that as a pioneer to take actions against more businesses doing the same:
- Earlier in 2019, Facebook took a company located in China to court after selling fake accounts, followers, and likes.
- Then, in June 2020, Facebook announced procedures against ‘MGP25 Cyberint Services’, a company located in Spain, after they were detected selling distributing fake comments and likes on Instagram.
- In August 2020, Facebook has filed suit against ‘Nakrutka’ a company that used automation software to spread and sell fake followers, views, comments, and likes on Instagram.
However, there are a lot of companies that offer free followers and likes, yet Facebook is progressively increasing its enforcements, and determining more common and famous providers as it looks to both disincentivize the practice and punishes them.
Additionally, Facebook has suspended the accounts of various companies that duped Facebook users by scam ads.
“Each of the companies used Facebook and Instagram to post ads for consumer products. When someone clicked the link in the ad to buy a product, the user was redirected to a third-party website to complete their purchase. After paying for the item, the user either never received the item or received an item that is different than the item described in the ad. In all cases, people were unable to return items or obtain a refund.”
As Facebook is moving in the path of eCommerce, this will be a new major area as it plans to fight scammers taking its platforms’ advantage.
