“If You’re Not Ashamed, Please Share” Facebook spam goes viral
Facebook like-farming spammers will use a whole host of abhorrent, manipulative and deceptive tactics to bait Facebook users. We’ve detailed a number of those tactics right here on this site.
The aim of like-farming spammers is to bait other Facebook users into engaging with their posts (liking, commenting and sharing) as well as following their spammy Facebook pages. Financial gain is often the motivation for like-farming, which we explain in more detail in our article about the subject here.
And one incredibly popular method these spammers use is emotional exploitation. This in turn had led to a rise in Facebook posts that aim to pull at the emotional heartstrings of readers; posts with the objective of accumulating likes, comments and shares.
One such type of post is the “If you’re not ashamed of me, please share“. Alternatively, the can read “If you’re not ashamed of me, type amen“. Such posts are likely to contain photos of people who have apparent disabilities.
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The exploitation angle of this particular modus operandi is rather blatant. The implication here is that by not sharing or commenting on the post, you are ashamed of the person in the photo. You are flagrantly being exploited into engaging with the post, and as such, fulfilling the shameless objective of the like-farming spammer.
To make matters worse, these like-farmers will almost certainly not have permission to use the images of the people depicted in them. This means the people in these photos are also being exploited by like-farming spammers, as well as the Facebook users lured into engaging with their images.
An example post. We’ve blurred the photo to protect the identity of the person depicted.
It’s essentially just another slightly reworded imitation of similar manipulative like-farming posts, such as the “one like = 1 prayer” type posts, or the “type amen” posts, or the “repost if you have a heart” or “ignore if you like cancer” type posts, or even the older posts that assert money will be donated to sick or injured children based on the number of likes or shares certain Facebook posts can accumulate.
It goes without saying that this type of exploitation – just to get likes and shares on Facebook posts – is beyond contemptible. It shows a total lack of respect to the very same people in the photos that the like-farmers are pretending to care about. To these spammers, it’s simply a numbers game. The more shares, likes and followers they can get, the more reach they have on Facebook – and reach can be turned into money through a number of different methods.
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Don’t play their game. Don’t like Facebook pages that use these techniques. Don’t engage with their posts – even if it’s a comment to illustrate your contempt. Any engagement is good for their posts, so the best piece of advice we can offer is simply this; ignore them.
What if I see myself in one of these posts?
While Facebook is unlikely to remove these posts if Facebook users report them, if you see yourself in such a post, you can let Facebook know through the reporting feature. Let Facebook know the image is of you and it has been used without your permission.
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