Where do the ‘likes' purchased come from?

Our world revolves around the likes .When choosing a restaurant, we take a look at the votes and comments.When buying online , we opt for the item with more punctuation.Many even choose their place of vacation in function of the photos that triumph the most on Instagram.

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Yes, the world has gone a little crazy.And it can be even worse: what would happen if we stopped to think that a lot of those scores are, in fact fake Many users of social networks buy followers and fraudulent likes at a reasonable price to companies that create deceptive profiles, a practice that we can all access and that, although it is not a crime, if it is considered unattractive.We tell you that there are behind all those likes we buy or can buy as soon as we want.For now.

The 'Like' farms

When Facebook included the 'I like' button in 2009, many saw the opportunity to start charging for each click.The idea is simple: social media users contact companies that buy packages from 'me like 'or followers.These in turn have workers who are responsible for creating profiles and interacting.Others have bots , computer programs that do these tasks automatically.

Although their business is really virtual, they have an infrastructure: farms installed in warehouses, offices and even apartments in which they store computer equipment.Some have computers and up to tens of thousands of mobile phones, dedicated only and to dynamize social networks.

Where do the ‘likes' purchased come from?

Slaves of like

Many of these farms are in developing countries such as China, Russia, Thailand or the Philippines.Alli, entrepreneurs take advantage of several advantages: on the one hand, cheap labor.Workers receive a salary (needless to say, very low) in relation to the number of accounts or fake likes they make per day.The business owners then sell them at a much higher price, so they make a profit.

On the other hand, the possibility of obtaining SIM cards without any type of control.Unlike in Spain, where it is necessary to present an identity document to obtain a telephone line, in many countries of the world this is not regulated.Manufacturers can buy hundreds or thousands of SIM cards to associate them with different social networks, without limit.For fraud detection algorithms it is difficult to recognize this activity as false: workers make fun of social media controls by entering a number phone, a email account and answer the captcha and security questions.

But not all are people from developing countries.There are also those who run this business to generate extra income in their spare time.And user communities that interact in exchange for comments or likes in their own profiles.

Where do the ‘likes' purchased come from?

The million dollar question is: where do they get the data to create each profile? For this there are a number of web tools that generate personal data of different nationalities, such as Fake Name Generator, or programs that transform or create photographs of faces with artificial intelligence.The problem begins when real and stolen data or photographs begin to be used./p>

Bots running 24 hours a day

The other side of the coin is the computer programs developed by experts, which perform all these actions in an automated way.Among its advantages is productivity: they replace labor and can generate millions of accounts in a single day.Among its drawbacks, the fact that they are easier to detect, due to the volume of their activity.

A study from the University of Southern California and Indiana University noted, as early as 2017, that up to 15% of Twitter accounts were actually bots , and not people.At that time , the percentage translated into 48 million accounts false, dedicated to give likes or retweet automatically.

Influencer fraud

Imagine a fashionable influencer who has millions of followers: brands raffle it and pay up to 1,000 euros for each promotional post.But of his followers, 35% are fake.And for every post he publishes, he buys several thousand likes.That means that from the price the brand is paying him, a large percentage will fall into a broken sack.'zombie' users that don't exist.

Where do the ‘likes' purchased come from?

This fraud can also be used to wash the public image of politicians or entrepreneurs in discrediting, launch new brands or applications on the network and make viral false news, or, on the other hand, to spread malicious computer codes.

Some estimates indicate that this industry moves hundreds of millions of euros, although social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram penalize the creation of fake accounts.Among the main reasons is that, for now, there is no law that prohibit such actions.

However, most of those who grow their profiles or businesses with fake profiles keep it a secret.Few users would be happy to discover that the likes of their favorite profiles actually come from of telephones stacked on farms across the world.

Images | Unsplash/Marc Schafer, Unsplash/Hal Gatewood, Unsplash/Jakob Owens, Unsplash/Oladimeji Odunsi

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