Link farming, feed clutter, and more.
Like or unlike. Sad, wow or angry. These emotional responses have consequences. And who has not clicked away on them. Heck, I do not even know if a like means I like the shared post or the post sharer, much less which one I am supposed to be angry with. A little ambiguous.
I never gave this much thought, but today I learned a lesson on what happens by responding to that click.
Although I am still not sure if it makes a hill of a beans difference which of the emotions might actually mean or what my click will do. I did know that cookies from my visiting other sites will result in their ads popping up in my feed to read. Heck, I even got a reminder once from an on-line store that I still had items in its checkout lane.
But thanks to a friend asking me about a share I never made and a USA Today story (“Don’t click ‘like’ on Facebook again until you read this“), I now know a little more about the risks and consequences of “link farming”, “news feeds”, and hitting the engaging little button on the bottom left.
I thought I was simply showing a little support for the person or product and nothing more by hitting one of those “like” responses. I also knew that FB would also now send me notifications about that post.
Well, there is more to this than meets the eye.
Now it seems that the entire post can pop up in MY feed as a “share” and was kindly asked to remove it because of the image. An image accompanying a post that I remarked “sad”. According to one of my friend, this happened. And I was not too happy about that invasion and potential misrepresentation of my position. BTW. I have read some of FB’s announcements on this, and it would be a public service if they would not only explain in more detail what those clicks mean and how they are used. A little public service would be great.
Here is an extract from the story.
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“How to avoid like-farming
Your best bet to avoid like-farming is to be very judicious about what you like and share on Facebook. Don’t just reflexively click “like” on everything. Take a look at where the post is coming from. If it’s from someone you don’t recognize, it could be a friend of a friend or it could be a complete stranger. It would be good to find out.
Notice the content and whether it promises anything for liking or sharing. If it does, it’s a good clue that it’s a scam of some kind. The same goes if you feel pushed or pressured into clicking like or share. Click here for 5 Facebook scams that continue to spread like wildfire.
Don’t forget that, in the end, minimizing your likes is more than just a good security measure. It also reduces the clutter in your friends’ news feeds, and their clutter in yours, so you can all spend more time seeing the really important posts. That’s a win-win for everyone.”