This like-farming Facebook profile is absolutely abhorrent
Muhammad Sajid, please stand up. For you, sir, may be the owner of the most abhorrent, contemptible and manipulative Facebook like-farming page on the Internet.
And the competition for that title is fierce.
While Muhammad Sajid may not be this like-farmers real name (it could, in reality, be anyone) that is the name of the Facebook profile that is used to post an almost endless string of the most emotionally manipulative and outright deceptive posts we’ve seen for some time.
Cast your mind back to any of our articles describing various types of exploitative like-farming posts; this page has most likely posted one in the last week or so. And worse.
A scroll down this Facebook profile, and we’re asking ourselves… where do we start?
So we picked this one, an image of a cancer survivor, asking for Facebook users to type Amen into the comments. Or so it may seem.
Actually, no. This isn’t a cancer survivor asking for people to type Amen. Yes, it’s a cancer survivor – it’s a girl named Brandy Franson who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 – but she’s not asking for your ‘amen’s. The photo you see above has been digitally altered by like-farming spammers looking to exploit both Brandy and Facebook users, in order to get comments for their Facebook posts. The real photo is below.
Digitally altering photos of cancer patients to lure people into commenting on your posts is perhaps one of the most abhorrent things a like-farming spammer can do. But only a handful of posts down and things were worse.
The next post was another image imploring users type “amen” and share, and this photo depicted a baby that had passed away, lying in his casket. We’re not showing the image on this article, but a reverse image search suggested the baby was named Johnny who tragically died when he was only a few weeks old. This like-farming page clearly didn’t know Johnny’s backstory, since they introduced the baby boy as a girl, whilst at the same time imploring Facebook users to share the photo.
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It’s the perfect illustration of how callous and immoral like-farming is, or can be. To take a photo of a dead child, and feign sympathy, playing on the emotions of those reading your posts, just to accumulate engagement on a Facebook post.
As we continue to scroll, we see almost every type of like-farming post in the like-farmers “textbook”. Pictures of disabled children and teenagers along with captions like “no one gave an Amen – type amen to show your support”. Pictures of women with breast cancer along with the claim that “people are ashamed of me, please type amen to show your support”. “Impossible” math quizzes that are actually simple if you understand the BODMAS principle. Posts asking you to like them if you “love you mom”. Posts of sick children that denounce you as “heartless” if you “scroll past” them. Posts using photoshopped depictions of Jesus Christ along with the request to type amen for a miracle. Posts that ask you to type something to ”see what happens.”
This Facebook profile has them all. To reiterate, no one depicted in many of the posts would have given the profile owner permission to exploit their photos in such a manner. At the time of writing, this exploitative string of posts has earned the like-farming profile over 50,000 followers.
The Facebook profile perfectly illustrates just how immoral like-farming is, and the damage you can be doing by participating in it. Not only do these types of pages and profiles exploit Facebook users using emotional exploitation and deception, they also exploit the many people whose photos they steal or orchestrate this type of manipulation.
Do not allow yourself to be exploited in such a way. Don’t type “amen” or engage in any posts that attempt to draw an emotional response from the reader, and please let your friends know how like-farming works as well. To read our full write up on like-farming, how it works and what spammers have to gain from it, read our article here.
Also worth a read –
Why you shouldn’t type Amen on a Facebook post
Repost if you have a heart – Emotional extortion on Facebook
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