We’ve all seen them in our news feeds, and most of us have “Liked” and “Shared” them at one time or another. I’m talking about “Like and Share bait posts”, and Facebook is now starting to penalize Pages that publish them.
Like and Share bait posts typically contain images that consist of a touching photo along with a written message that tons of people are sure to agree with. After all, plenty of folks have a daughter they love with all their heart, right?
The common thread between all of these bait posts is that you will be asked to “Like” and “Share” the post if you agree with the message or find the image to be “touching” in some way.
Sounds harmless, right? Well, it really isn’t.
These bait posts often masquerade as vehicles for spreading good cheer or bringing awareness to a disturbing problem, but many of them are posted by scammers who couldn’t care less about doing either. The real intent of the post is to generate tons of “Likes” and “Shares”, both for the post itself and the Facebook Page it is posted on.
The reason the scammers post these bait posts is to make lots of easy money. They create a new Facebook page, build a mountain of “Likes” and “Shares” on it, then either use the page to market shady products or scams to the page’s “fans” or sell the page outright to other scammers who use it for the same purpose. Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of “Likes” and “Shares” sell for big bucks on the black market.
The next time you see one of these bait posts, you might want to re-consider “Liking” or “Sharing” it regardless of how touching the photo is or how much you agree with the text. There’s a huge chance that doing so will help a scammer line his pockets with someone else’s hard-earned money.
Thankfully, now that Facebook has begun cracking down on Pages that publish bait posts we should start seeing fewer of them in our newsfeeds.