Selling social media clicks becomes big business
SAN JOSE, Calif.
(AP) -- Celebrities, businesses and even the U.S. State Department
have bought bogus Facebook likes, Twitter followers or YouTube viewers
from offshore "click farms," where workers tap, tap, tap the thumbs up
button, view videos or retweet comments to inflate social media numbers.
Since
Facebook launched almost 10 years ago, users have sought to expand
their social networks for financial gain, winning friends, bragging
rights and professional clout. And social media companies cite the
levels of engagement to tout their value.
But
an Associated Press examination has found a growing global marketplace
for fake clicks, which tech companies struggle to police. Online
records, industry studies and interviews show companies are capitalizing
on the opportunity to make millions of dollars by duping social media.
For
as little as a half cent each click, websites hawk everything from
LinkedIn connections to make members appear more employable to
Soundcloud plays to influence record label interest.
"Anytime
there's a monetary value added to clicks, there's going to be people
going to the dark side," said Mitul Gandhi, CEO of seoClarity, a Des
Plaines, Ill., social media marketing firm that weeds out phony online
engagements.
Italian security researchers and
bloggers Andrea Stroppa and Carla De Micheli estimated in 2013 that
sales of fake Twitter followers have the potential to bring in $40
million to $360 million to date, and that fake Facebook activities bring
in $200 million a year.
As a result, many
firms, whose values are based on credibility, have entire teams doggedly
pursuing the buyers and brokers of fake clicks. But each time they
crack down on one, another, more creative scheme emerges.
When
software engineers wrote computer programs, for example, to generate
lucrative fake clicks, tech giants fought back with software that
screens out "bot-generated" clicks and began regularly sweeping user
accounts.
YouTube wiped out billions of music
industry video views last December after auditors found some videos
apparently had exaggerated numbers of views. Its parent-company, Google,
is also constantly battling people who generate fake clicks on their
ads.
And Facebook, whose most recent quarterly
report estimated as many as 14.1 million of its 1.18 billion active
users are fraudulent accounts, does frequent purges. That's particularly
important for a company that was built on the principle that users are
real people.
Twitter's Jim Prosser said
there's no upside. "In the end, their accounts are suspended, they're
out the money and they lose the followers," he said.
LinkedIn
spokesman Doug Madey said buying connections "dilutes the member
experience," violates their user agreement and can also prompt account
closures.
Google and YouTube "take action against bad actors that seek to game our systems," said spokeswoman Andrea Faville.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of 7 million in South Asia, is an international hub for click farms.
The
CEO of Dhaka-based social media promotion firm Unique IT World said he
has paid workers to manually click on clients' social media pages,
making it harder for Facebook, Google and others to catch them. "Those
accounts are not fake, they were genuine," Shaiful Islam said.
A
recent check on Facebook showed Dhaka was the most popular city for
many, including soccer star Leo Messi, who has 51 million likes;
Facebook's own security page, which has 7.7 million likes; and Google's
Facebook page, which has 15.2 million likes.
In
2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was
recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans
after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000
to boost the numbers.
In one case, its fan tally rose from about 10,000 to more than 2.5 million.
Sometimes there are plausible explanations for click increases.
For
example, Burger King's most popular city was, for a few weeks this
year, Karachi, Pakistan, after the chain opened several restaurants
there.
While the Federal Trade Commission and
several state attorney generals have cracked down on fake endorsements
or reviews, they have not weighed in on clicks. Meanwhile, hundreds of
online businesses sell clicks and social media accounts from around the
world.
BuyPlusFollowers sells 250 Google+
shares for $12.95. InstagramEngine sells 1,000 followers for $12.
AuthenticHits sells 1,000 SoundCloud plays for $9.
It's a lucrative business, said the president and CEO of WeSellLikes.com.
"The
businesses buy the Facebook likes because they're afraid that when
people go to their Facebook page and they only see 12 or 15 likes,
they're going to lose potential customers," he said. The company
official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he recently moved his
company offshore to avoid litigation or cease-and-desist notices.
In
Indonesia, a social media-obsessed country with some of the largest
number of Facebook pages and Twitter users, click farms are
proliferating.
Ali Hanafiah, 40, offers 1,000
Twitter followers for $10 and 1 million for $600. He owns his own
server, and pays $1 per month per Internet Protocol address, which he
uses to generate thousands of social media accounts.
Those accounts, he said, "enable us to create many fake followers."
During
an interview at a downtown Jakarta cafe, Hanafiah - wearing a Nike cap,
blue jeans and a white T-shirt - said large social networks can boost a
business' public profile.
"Today, we are living in a tight competition world that is forcing people to compete with many tricks," he said.
Tony
Harris, who does social media marketing for major Hollywood movie
firms, said he would love to be able to give his clients massive numbers
of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but buying them from random
strangers is not very effective or ethical.
"The illusion of a massive following is often just that," he said.
The fake click market has generated another business: auditors.
Robert
Waller, founder of London-based Status People, helps clients block
fakes. "We have had a lot of people who have bought fake accounts,
realized it's a stupid idea and they're looking for ways to get rid of
them," he said.
David Burch, at TubeMogul, a
video marketing firm based in Emeryville, Calif., said that buying
clicks to promote clients is a grave error. "It's bad business," he
said, "and if an advertiser ever found out you did that, they'd never do
business with you again."
