If you read Virgin Australia – Spot the Difference then you now already know 7 ways to spot a fake Facebook page.
I wanted to go into this a little bit further. I came about the fake Facebook page when several of my Facebook friends (who shall remain nameless) shared this particular post. I suppose it’s comforting to know that they read instructions.
What is less comforting is the amount of Facebook Terms & Condition violations that are listed in this fake “competition”; which makes me feel like I’m the only one that reads them.
Facebook Rules for Competitions
So back in August there were a few changes in the rules for running competitions on Facebook. This allows more flexibility to run them directly on Facebook instead of through a third party app. However one of the very specific rules was that you are not allowed to ask people to either tag themselves or friends in a photo that doesn’t have them in it, or ask them to share it. Part of the reason for this is your privacy settings makes it hard for the page to actually see if you’ve shared it and therefore invalidates the competition.
The second thing is that the fake page it states that winners will be messaged and announced on Facebook. You cannot message a profile as a page, unless they have messaged you first. This is a basic privacy protection, otherwise all the pages you ever liked would have messaged you already with spam. Facebook actually protects you probably more than you realise.
Now this is not to say that legitimate pages/businesses/companies don’t make these mistakes on a regular basis when it comes to competitions. As some of my clients have learnt on their own more recently when they do the wrong thing when it comes to Facebook – they’re not your friend. They’re not even my friend, don’t be fooled. It is not an easy process to ask for forgiveness. Try to do the right thing, or speak to me first if you’re not sure and save me from pulling out my hair.
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