

Facebook “Promoted Posts” have primarily foreign “Likes”: Why? - jaybna
http://www.fetzervalves.com/post/33503162498/facebook-promoted-posts-foreign-likes

======
chaz
This is happening because the promoted post is for a giveaway. A lot of
incoming traffic can happen when you do a giveaway because freebie/contest
blogs all cross-post it, and you can get a surprising amount of traffic if the
prize is juicy enough.

If you clickthrough on the actual link from the post, it's to a contest entry
form. After you provide your name, email, and ZIP code, it says "Want another
chance to win? Just share this post on your Facebook Wall. Use the icon above!
Don't forget to 'Like' on Facebook too!"

The official rules don't specifically require US citizenship or residency
(most small businesses don't bother with real rules), though it does say that
the prize has to be picked up in Tennessee.

The contest form:
[https://crosscreek.moontoast.com/estore/embed/1744?fbId=506a...](https://crosscreek.moontoast.com/estore/embed/1744?fbId=506a56a1bae29)

~~~
cr4zy
Isn't the author saying this phenomenon is unique to _Promoted Posts_? I
assume they've done giveaways before without the same reaction. He also says
the accounts looked BOT-esque. I don't think the likes can totally be
attributed to just freebie chasing. Could definitely be a factor, but Facebook
has a disturbing history of click-fraud and this definitely still looks like
that to me.

~~~
jaybna
The author here - yes, cr4zy, it seems to be isolated to Promoted Posts. I
actually put two samples in the writeup. One is a contest and the other is
just a status update. Both have the same problem. Furthermore, the contest
entrants basically all seemed legit. It was only the Facebook Likes that
seemed to be bot-ridden. If this were just freebie-chasing then I would think
the non-contest posts would not be having the same issue.

~~~
chaz
Your second post was promoted to friends of the first post, with their name
and photos attached to it, saying that they like your page. So someone from
Indonesia who entered the contest ended up being a conduit by which your page
was promoted to lots of other Indonesians.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way that you can avoid promoting to
them in the future. That's really annoying because you will spending a lot of
your promotion $ on useless fans. You can still run regular targeted ads,
though, that show up on the right side. EDIT: it can be done:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650476>

Click fraud doesn't make sense to me because there's no incentive for it.
Promoted posts are priced by reach, so a click, like, comment, share, etc.
don't cost anyone anymore. It simply provides free viral distribution via the
ticker and newsfeed.

I disagree that the likes are "bot-ridden." I checked out 15 at random. 13
looked real, with lots of recent photos, friends, posts, and gaming app
activity. One looked like it was just posting photos from movies (but with a
fair number of friends ... a business profile?). The last one was freshly
created (seems weird), but most of the posts and comments were posted via the
mobile app (seems legit).

I was surprised that none of the 15 were locked down. Fake accounts I see in
the US have the most conservative privacy settings.

------
nikcub
These are all real users. I recently checked out a similar issue when I
noticed the large number of foreign likes and comments on the wall posts of
tech people with large followings.

Turns out that as Facebook got hundreds of millions of new users in the Middle
East and Indonesia (4th largest country now) they didn't separate out their
recommendation system and were promoting US based tech people as someone to
follow.

So now whenever somebody I follow, like Mike Arrington or Shira Lazar posts
something, 80% of the comments and likes and most of their new followers are
from people in these countries who often have no idea what they are talking
about and don't know what is going on.

It has really made Facebook messy for these folk, since you can't easily
delete 100,000 followers from Saudi Arabia[1]

So anyway, this has the graph all mixed up, because now Facebook thinks that
all these people are 6 degrees closer to you than they really are, since they
likely follow somebody that you follow - hence why they are shown the promoted
post. This all goes back to an error made in the first few weeks of pushing
new subscribers.

To add to that, there is a cultural gap in the translation of 'like' in some
other languages. For eg. in some areas it is considered unpolite not to click
the like button, while others use it as a form of 'mark as read', or 'seen
this'.

The like and comment activity just happens to also be an antire magnitude
higher from the people from these nations, and they happen to now only be a
degree or two away from you in the Facebook graph because of a follow
promotion error.

[1] They are also ridiculously friendly, I am sure I am not the only person
who has received a message about 'want to make friends' from somebody at a
Gulf or Saudi university.

~~~
continuations
> they likely follow somebody that you follow - hence why they are shown the
> promoted post.

I always thought Promoted Posts are only promoted to people who have already
"liked" your page.

Are you saying that if I follow Mike Arrington, and person X also follows
Arrington, then if I promote one of my posts, Facebook will show it to person
X merely because we both follow Arrington even though there is no connection
at all between me and X?

That sounds like a scam.

~~~
pud
Facebook gives you the option when promoting a post. (A) Just show to people
who like you? (B) Also show to their friends.

------
searchergss
This is ridiculous. Target the promotion to US-only.

Now, if your page is liked by folks in foreign countries then you still may
get (organic!) foreign likes, but you shouldn't be getting any paid foreign
likes.

tldr: layer on US-only targeting

~~~
bennesvig
You can't target only people in the US for promoted posts. The only options
are to promote to Facebook fans or to promote to Facebook fans and friends of
fans. Many of those friends of fans have ended up coming from foreign
countries in my experience for a local restaurant.

~~~
orijing
That's not true. The target icon lets you target page posts, and the promotion
will inherit the targeting of the page post.

Example: <http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png>

I'm a page owner (130k+ fans).

~~~
bennesvig
Weird. I don't have that option on a page with 1,500 fans.

------
mtkd
These are bots. Too many comments here trying to justify that they are not -
too many vested interests on HN.

I spoke to an SEO guy 2+ years ago who was building them. He didn't know why
at the time, but he knew having 1000s of identities with social graphs, a
posting history etc. would have some value at some point.

He was already using a mix of full automation and Turk - and thinking about
what a natural activity pattern would like and how you could randomise it
without creating a pattern yourself.

Ultimately the sites that are letting this happen will be worse off for not
doing all they can to stop it. Unfortunately most of these companies are
measured by metrics that encourage it.

------
qeorge
My assumption is these bot accounts are used for selling Likes/Follows on
Facebook, and they Like everything in sight so that the paid Likes blend in.

That said, its unbelievably frustrating if you are trying to run Facebook ads.
Nothing against foreigners, but I have to pay for every Like/click, and I'm
sure they don't want to buy the local service I'm selling (and are clearly not
reading the ad).

Its the ad exchange's job to curtail this sort of thing, and Facebook does a
very poor job of it compared to e.g., Google. I hope they get it under
control.

~~~
pud
In theory, Facebook's (and Google AdWords') auction model protects you against
this. In theory, you're tracking conversions/effectiveness, and if the number
of bots that click your ad double, that means the ads are worth half, so you
adjust your bid accordingly.

That's the theory at least. Reality is probably different.

------
mschaecher
Here's a plausible explanation for what is happening:

For any given user on facebook, there is a limited amount of promoted posts
that facebook will show in their feed at any given time/day so that their
feeds don't become overwhelmed with promoted/sponsored content.

So like other ad platforms, i.e. auction based, you are competing for that
limited space with other brands and pages that are promoting/sponsoring
content. If everyone is competing for the high value fans, i.e. us based fans,
it would be easy to get "bid out" by putting in to low of an amount.

But since no one is likely targeting India/Indonesia/Philippines, those are
cheap. And if your fans there are all that are available to you because of bid
optimization constraints, facebook will most likely end up sending a
disproportionate amount of your views to those fans.

Now for some sample math: If you have, let's say 5 friends in Indonesia, let's
see how that could play out. Indonesia and Phillipines facebook users
generally have more fb friends on avg then the rest of the world. Call it 170.
So your potential audience of 'friends of fans' in indonesia is = 850.

Since not many, if any brands, are attempting to target those 850 people, you
could saturate them with your promoted/sponsored content. Users in that part
of the world also 'like' stuff more frequently and at a higher volume. No
let's say that you get 15 likes from those 850 'friends of fans'. That like
action will create an organic story in those peoples' friends newsfeeds. So 15
people, with avg of 170 friends each, like that sponsored post and an organic
feed story is seen on avg by about 14% of any users friends you could reach
357 more organic impressions.

That cycle can continue on and on.

------
mmahemoff
As a related data point, I had a post go viral today on Google+ (~500 +1s, 100
shares) [1] and after about an hour, the most inane comments started piling
on.

"hello"

"hi friendz"

"hi"

"Every one how is the day?﻿"

"What's the topic for today, can any one tell me? Please!" etc etc

I can explain the timing. It presumably hit "What's Hot" so they all saw it.
But like OP, I don't know what to make of it. Maybe one of the OP's theories,
maybe all of them.

1\.
[https://plus.google.com/106413090159067280619/posts/ZFTKZQfj...](https://plus.google.com/106413090159067280619/posts/ZFTKZQfjUDH)

~~~
chucknthem
These comments doesn't make sense for spam (unless their account links to a
lot of spam?) I wonder if it's non-english speakers trying to practice their
english.

~~~
saber_taylor
Without squinting too closely, I think it's this one. I get these on
Livejournal and have seen them around the 'net. There's generic content that
may apply to any possible post, and then the incentive is the PageRank that
flows back from the username link. An improvement even would be to have a bot
generate text based on the post, and then have paid humans deal with the
captchas. </evilhat>

~~~
EGreg
I thought username links were nofollow?

------
chadisfaction
We had a similar problem with Chinese and Spanish comments via paid promotions
for spencersmarket.com. I speak Spanish and my cofounder speaks Mandarin,
these comments were not legitimate. Clearly there is some form of
inauthenticity taking place with Facebook's paid promotions. My solution had
been to use the language targeting tools to only expose the post only to an
English (US) audience.

------
wyck
You can see the same sketchy metrics in Facebook ads even when drilling down
to specific regions. It makes Facebook's platform questionable in regards to
any promotions or advertising.

At this point you might as well just run your ads directly via mechanical
turk.

------
BasDirks
"Sorry, but there is no way a ton of people from Indonesia, Saudia Arabia,
etc. have suddenly and amazingly become interested in a southern women’s blog
(stylish as it may be). Besides, the Likes appear only on promoted posts."

Among the Asian nouveau riche and middle class fashion is a big deal. How do I
know? Facebook friends.

The rest of his comments and conclusions might be accurate, but that bit
sounds ignorant. Asian region/language-specific web communities are among the
biggest in the world, and this includes fashion related groups.

~~~
jakejake
Meh, I get annoyed when people try to make something seem racist that isn't.
Is it so hard to believe that Asians would be interested in a style blog? No,
that isn't the point. Is it hard to believe that a promoted post for an
English language blog which isn't specific to Asian culture would be
overwhelmingly clicked by people from Asian countries? Yes, it seems odd. That
isn't really saying anything about Asian people - it is saying something about
Facebook's advertising platform.

Either Asian people really love clicking on ads, something about their blog
caught fire in several Asian countries, or else there is click fraud going on.
The most obvious answer is the latter.

~~~
BasDirks
I get annoyed when people imply that I am trying to make something seem racist
when I'm not. Just saying you'd be surprised about the massive interest for
(Western) culture and style in certain parts of Asia.

------
throwaway_1937
Perhaps of interest: BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones'
investgiation into fake likes from earlier this year:

<http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18813237>

~~~
anonymouz
Also recall the company that estimated that 80% of its clicks are coming from
bots (based on disabled Javascript).

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of-its-
fa...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of-its-facebook-ad-
clicks-are-coming-from-bots/)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731>

(The original link from the HN submission is unfortunately gone)

~~~
lostnet
I found roughly the same thing comparing apache logs with google analytics.

A direct conspiracy would be a pretty bad business model, but fake friend and
spam disseminating accounts may be less likely to be canceled if bots or
minions keep them active with bogus activity.

If ~80% of profits is really from bots, then it's hard for fb not to turn a
blind eye to these accounts.

------
anigbrowl
You can buy likes on eBay for about $10/thousand. I'm guessing that the sort
of people who sell that service pick random pages to do before/after
screenshots with datestamps etc. Sure, screenshots could be faked, but it's
probably cheaper in terms of time spent to just do it for real and treat it as
an overhead expense for your clickfarm.

~~~
EGreg
Come on, where can you get 1000 likes for $10?

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't check the prices frequentyl, but here's 1000 for $20:
[http://www.ebay.com/itm/1000-Facebook-Likes-to-your-
WebSite-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/1000-Facebook-Likes-to-your-
WebSite-/300792577013?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4608a27bf5)

I've seen better deals than this within the last month. I don't use this sort
of service BTW, I just did some research into it because I like electronic
dance music and I've heard that audience-renting is rampant right now; it's
easier to just buy your way into the charts than market a tune/perfmormer
organically.

------
delinka
I would err on the side of conspiracy and say that someone is being
compensated for hitting the "like" button. Maybe not on _your_ promoted post,
but somewhere on Facebook. So others see easy money and click. What's the
worst that can happen? They don't get paid.

------
ianterrell
My personal hypothesis after seeing a lot of this sort of behavior on
advertised pages of mine is that a small but significant portion of Facebook
is trained to just click "Like" indiscriminately (or at least, at the barest
hint of something worthwhile).

------
ChuckMcM
Not sure I understand enough about the Facebook market to understand the
cost/benefit of likes.

I get that Facebook charges for a 'promoted post', is there additional revenue
capture on a 'like' ? I wonder if someone who is familiar with this could give
us a run down of where any money flows (both source and destination) for a
transaction like this. The only one I can see from the post is a one time
purchase for 'promotion' from the vendor to Facebook.

------
calbear81
We've seen the same problem with some of our promoted posts and we get a lot
of foreign language comments on our posts that sound really spammy.

One clue is we usually get a message from someone who say's "we sent 5 likes
to your post, please like our page back" or something to that effect. I'm
guessing these are "like" harvesters who hope that spamming other people's
posts with likes, they will in return get some likes back to their client's
posts.

------
rickyconnolly
Did you try contacting some of these people and just asking them why they
liked the ad? The botnet hypothesis is just that. As is the sleazy fraud
theory.

------
zafka
"(about 90% of the time a company in Boca Raton, Florida is involved but that
is a longer story)."

This just makes me smile. I finished my degree at FAU in Boca, but was so busy
working to pay my way, I missed the seamy underbelly of the town. A few years
back, my brother was there for business and got sucked into a Pump and dump
scheme with one of his "wealthy" friends.

------
pz
i'm an engineer working on promoted posts (same guys as
<https://www.facebook.com/georgehtakei/posts/475040805858711>)

I offered up a response here:
[http://philztheengineernotthecoffee.tumblr.com/post/33650957...](http://philztheengineernotthecoffee.tumblr.com/post/33650957315/whypromotedpostsshowmoreforeignlikes)

searchgss and mschaecher pretty much nailed it in their comments:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650787>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649243>

------
rjd
Oddly enough Im only getting suggested friends and friend requests exclusively
from Indonesian. I have no idea why, Ive never been to indonesian, and I know
no indonesians. Something with Facebooks suggestion processes are seriously
broken I think.

------
robryan
For promoted posts these post generally only show for people that have liked
and their friends. So it could depend a lot on where the page likes are from,
specifically if some are from Facebook ads then the problem may have started
back there.

------
fchollet
It's a question I've been faced with in the past, and just now I was expecting
the smart crowd at HN to reach a consensus on why. It's interesting to see the
sheer diversity of opinions. I guess it's not an easy question after all.

------
lucian303
Like Spam. Not really surprising. Undoubtedly someone is making money off of
this. Definitely Facebook, at least for now.

