Battling Fake Facebook Followers

A few months ago, I had a sudden overnight surge in new followers to my Words by Kimi Facebook page. I have a modest following, a few hundred people. So, seeing 17 new followers overnight is a pretty big deal. I admit it, I got a rush out of it. “People out there are listening to me!” Maybe one of my ranting posts got re-posted and some new people were exposed to my totally awesome content and amazing insights. Then, I checked out my new followers – all fake accounts.

Something similar happened on my Words by Kimi Instagram account. This was when I was an #InstaNewbie and I thought, “It’s that easy to get new followers. Cool!” But, that evening I got a message that went something like this “We just boosted your account and gave you new followers. There’s more where that come from. Give us some money and we’ll give you more followers.” I was bummed. Here I thought I posted some cool shit and people noticed, but some robo-account just gave me fake followers. I am not that kind of junkie you filthy robo-account!

Since I felt all social media savvy from that early experience, I figured I similar note would arrive asking me to buy more followers. I kept getting new fake account followers; the note never came.

This happened around the time Facebook weeded out fake accounts from Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo. Some new followers didn’t have a “Hometown” and others had American cities for hometowns. So, I admit that I started profiling these new followers for hints they were from one of these countries – names, facial features, clues in photos, you know, amateur sleuthing and profiling stuff.

Spot the Fake Facebook Accounts

Lemme back up a second. You are probably wondering, “Gee, how do you know they were fake accounts?” Well, there were a few things. I am going to use Laurel’s page as an example (BTW, Am I obliged to protect a fake account’s privacy by blocking names? I dunno, so I did.)

New Facebook User

A bunch of these new followers had brand new Facebook Accounts. Sure, a newbie could come across my page and think “This is really amazing content, I must follow Words by Kimi NOW.” But, I pretty much exist in obscurity relative to the social media noise and I seriously doubt Facebook feels like doing little old me a favor by suggesting my page to newbies.

Laurel joined in April 3, 2019 – days before she found Words by Kimi

Profile Photos

While some of my new followers kept their ghostly avatar as their profile photo, others had super sexy, super seductive profile pictures – stilettos, smoldering eyes, longing gazes, pouty lips, lounging, straddling or strutting. Although, it wasn’t universally seductive, some had very innocent school girl-type looks. Oh, this brings me to another point, my new fake followers are entirely women.

So, looking at Laurel’s page there, there isn’t anything overtly seductive, not like Karina (a potentially Russian name?) below. However, notice how different Laurel on April 3rd looks from Laurel on April 4th from Laurel on May 15th. Just saying, that is some serious plastic surgery to make all them the same Laurel.

Link to Nude Photos

Then, there is the most obvious sign of a fake account – a link to their nude photos. Maybe you misssed it on April 4th, but when Laurel had straight blond hair with bangs, she also had a nude photo link. Below, Ms. Sullivan also has a link to nudes and she has strangely morphed from lounging-brunette-in-stilettos to leaning-come-hither-blonde to friendly-smiling-blonde-with-feathered-hair.

Reverse Image Search

I did a reverse image search on Google for Laurel’s brunette photo. It found a single link back to a Russian website. It doesn’t appear to be anything porn or nefarious Russian hacker related. It is a fashion event promoter of some kind.

Doing a reverse image look up for one image was fine, but I sure as shit am not going to take the time to do it for all 17 new followers I got that day, not to mention the hundreds I’ve gotten since.

Why the Surge of Fake Followers?

For some reason, I now get 5-20 of these fake followers every week. I don’t know why. Perhaps hackers are gearing up for the 2020 elections and trying to make fake profiles seem legit by following obscure pages like mine and amassing new friends.

Most of my followers are friends, family, and carryovers from when my page was “Cooking with Kimi.” Outside of friends and family, the other followers likely took a cooking class with me or were interested in my cooking classes. When I changed the name to “Words by Kimi,” I lost a couple of dozen followers.

It was after the name change that I started getting fake followers, but not for about a month. I don’t know if my new page name makes it more enticing for these fake accounts. Or if the loss of followers triggered it. I looked for information about a major algorithm change at Facebook, but nothing obvious popped up that would explain this. So, I don’t know why this is happening.

What are the Fake Accounts After?

As you can see, Laurel has 27 friends now. Other than changing her profile photo a few times, Laurel hasn’t done much since she followed me.

Her friends are mostly men because it seems some men have no problems friending a stranger that offers them nude photos. But there are a few women in there.

Personally, I don’t friend anyone I don’t know or I can’t make any connection to, but I guess some people don’t mind strangers sending friend requests. Seriously people, why? Do you really need friends like Laurel here? Go to your facebook settings and change the “Who can send you friend requests?” to “Friends of Friends.”

So, that “Friends or Friends” thing works for personal accounts. Unfortunately, there is no equivilent setting for Facebook Pages and besides, on my Words by Kimi page, I actually do want new followers even if they are not “Friends of Friends,” but I want REAL followers.

Keep the Fake Followers?

I thought about keeping the followers because isn’t it good to have lots of followers? Isn’t this like a “followers beget more followers” thing? According to the hive mind of people that boil to the top of Google searches about “What to do about Fake Followers on Facebook,” fake followers are bad and if I have too many of them, my page will get less exposure. So says a Google algorithm that is based on clicks, SEO and ranking or sites with lots of followers. That is very meta, right? Example, this crowned “Top Influencer” whose post was the third Google search result tells me I should delete these ladies from my following post haste – it’s not number of followers, it’s engagement that counts, blah, blah, blah

After the real follower losses from changing my page name , I tried to boost my number of “real” followers by making a plea on my personal page to like “Words by Kimi.” I must have read on one of those influencers pages that increasing real likes can discourage the fake likes. It didn’t do much, but I did get some friends on-board. So, positive unintended consequence.

Restricting Countries

There is a feature for Facebook pages where I restricted the countries that could see my page. I added some of the top offenders for fake accounts to the list of restricted countries – Russia, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Ukraine, Pakistan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Macedonia, and Kosovo.

I didn’t see a noticeable difference in the number of new fake followers I got each week. I assume some of these smarty pants hackers just use a VPN in the USA to nefariously follow obscure accounts.

Banning & Removing

For a little while, I would wake up in the morning and check the new followers. I would go to the fake accounts and report them to the Facebook black hole of reporting. Then, I would either ban or remove the followers from my page likes. This got tedious.

Not only was it a waste of my time – time I could be writing witty shit like this instead. I also felt like I was doing Facebook’s job. Every time I flagged a fake account, I thought “Why the fuck do I have to do this work for you when this account is so obviously fake?” Seriously, some fake accounts are more overt and harder to spot than these, so why don’t those smarty pants Facebook algorithm designers have an algorithm for these low-grade, lazy fake accounts? No wonder Facebook is failing at the harder stuff like protecting election integrity and removing hate speech.

That is just a long way for me to say “I am not doing this unpaid labor of finding fake accounts for you!”

Now, I just ban and remove these new accounts once a week. Still a waste of my time and sometimes some accounts persist on the list. No matter how many times I remove them, they are there again the next week. It’s only a fraction of the new fake followers, but they are accumulating. What the fuck Facebook? Really, I try to help you out and then you punish me by not letting me delete Laurel there?

Now What?

I don’t have an answer here. I am frustrated with this bullshit. I’ve considered leaving Facebook altogether. I mean deleting my Words by Kimi page as well as my personal account.

On the Words by Kimi side, I call it a must have “business tool”, but let’s just face it, I am narcissist that wants to post things and get likes from my supposed “potential customers” aka my Facebook friends and family. Noam Chomsky called this “Manufacturing Consent” and, yes, I am complacent in this schema.

On the personal side, Facebook is seriously a downer. So much yelling into the void and so little actual connection with humanity. Facebook’s official motto might be ‘to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together,” but I find it isolating. Sure, it is the only place I can find friends and family who are far away, but commenting and giving an emoji aren’t making me all the much “closer” to them. It’s just keeping tabs on them.

But who is Facebook kidding, their unofficial motto has always been “Move Fast & Break Things,” which was replaced with the weird and strange “Move fast With Stable Infra” where “Infra” is short for “Infrastructure.” Sorry, that shit ain’t about community, it is about efficient coding.

I like to pretend I have a platform as Words by Kimi and some people are listening to me, so I keep posting my rantings to my Facebook page.

Well, this post went to a strange place of moral preaching that even includes a mention of Noam Chomsky. So be it.

In closing, here is another post for the masses and my fandom. What should I do next? Perhaps I’ll buy a broken ass type writer and hole myself up in a cabin in Montana.

Happy Cooking & Manufacturing Consent!