Facebook 'like farms' being banned

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thewizard92

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Hi All

I'm new to BHW so go easy on me ;)

Just thought I'd ask for some advice about how to get around a problem I'm having.

I have a website that's being referred to by some people as a 'like farm'.

I read an article yesterday that Facebook didn't like these websites and its a problem on the same scale as 'link farms' back when Google was new.

The site works like this


  • User visits the site
  • User creates a 'like' by typing something into a text box, it can be a sentence, a word or a phrase
  • When they hit submit a page is created and a Like button appears
  • When they hit the like button what they typed into the text box is 'liked' on their Facebook account
Because this then links back to our site we were getting around 1500 hits a day from a site that is less than 3 weeks old!!!!

Problem being, Facebook blocked the domain last week, so to bypass it I added a subdomain and changed the likes to this, which worked until today.

I went to change the subdomain again, but it appears Facebook has blocked the entire domain now.

They are doing this to all of the sites like this and its rather anoying, I had big plans for the site and they're being spoilt by Facebook.

Anyone got any ideas on how to bypass it?
 
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Nope.

The whole purpose of the 'Like' button is to allow users to 'like' the content. What you are doing is you are creating Likes without any content, which is against their policy. You need to have a content in your page. That's the whole purpose. That's Facebook's plan ever since they made the button.
 
Yeah I've heard this on the Facebook Dev forums and there's a big argument over what 'content' actually is.

To me, a phrase is content, if 10s of thousands of people think its good enough to visit the site and click the like button, then to me, that is content.
 
thewizard92 said:
Yeah I've heard this on the Facebook Dev forums and there's a big argument over what 'content' actually is.

To me, a phrase is content, if 10s of thousands of people think its good enough to visit the site and click the like button, then to me, that is content.
Click to expand...

Content to you, but not to Facebook and since Facebook makes the decisions, you gotta play by their rules. Is there anyway perhaps you can add content? Ask users to write an additional line or two? Get users to add content to the"like-page" that gets created?
 
DarthMaul said:
Content to you, but not to Facebook and since Facebook makes the decisions, you gotta play by their rules. Is there anyway perhaps you can add content? Ask users to write an additional line or two? Get users to add content to the"like-page" that gets created?
Click to expand...
the problem is fb even ban sites where people share images and videos
 
What kind of site are you creating? Can you share it? The reason I ask is that I too have a site as well as a Fan page but my Fan page's likes are growing but its nothing my users are doing. lol I am doing it for them
 
Instead of under mining the 'like' feature for traffic arbitrage why don't you do some promotions for facebook so that you don't appear to be abusing the like button.

Like create content about how good facebook is, or reveal different things you can do with FB. I doubt they would block you for doing promotions for them, meanwhile still benefitting from the arbitrage traffic. I created a site of such in fear that they would ban the domain for not having permission for having un-approved affiliation but I setup tracking and saw hits from Palo Alto CA (FB HQ) and haven't recieved any threats or request to take the site down, because I'm just basically giving information on how to use the platform for marketing uses, and also have privacy policies, and legal notices that the site isn't affiliated.

Dont be ignorant and think they do not know what your doing. They have a big web presence so sites like the one you created get ousted as soon as they sniff any TOS violations. Play by the rules and you will not get banned it's the universal law of the universe.

FB is cocky when it comes to people under-mining their API, they recently tried to trademark the word "Face".
 
Last edited:
Jurdan said:
Then you guys gotta think outside the box ;)
Click to expand...

633909704654000650-thinkoutsidethebox.jpg
 
DarthMaul said:
Content to you, but not to Facebook and since Facebook makes the decisions, you gotta play by their rules. Is there anyway perhaps you can add content? Ask users to write an additional line or two? Get users to add content to the"like-page" that gets created?
Click to expand...

I could add videos and images, but like has been mentioned, they don't like this. I could add other fields, like an area for articles maybe. I'm looking into what other content we can add.

cookiejar said:
Instead of under mining the 'like' feature for traffic arbitrage why don't you do some promotions for facebook so that you don't appear to be abusing the like button.

Like create content about how good facebook is, or reveal different things you can do with FB. I doubt they would block you for doing promotions for them, meanwhile still benefitting from the arbitrage traffic. I created a site of such in fear that they would ban the domain for not having permission for having un-approved affiliation but I setup tracking and saw hits from Palo Alto CA (FB HQ) and haven't recieved any threats or request to take the site down, because I'm just basically giving information on how to use the platform for marketing uses, and also have privacy policies, and legal notices that the site isn't affiliated.

Dont be ignorant and think they do not know what your doing. They have a big web presence so sites like the one you created get ousted as soon as they sniff any TOS violations. Play by the rules and you will not get banned it's the universal law of the universe.

FB is cocky when it comes to people under-mining their API, they recently tried to trademark the word "Face".
Click to expand...

I suppose you're right. I knew Facebook wasn't happy with what we were doing when I set up the site and I did it as an experiment, but once I saw the amount of traffic we were getting from it, well I'm sure everyone would be the same. 1000 UVs a day on a 3 week old site, you're obviously want to keep that up.

Even before Facebook blocked the domain I was looking at what other content we could add, so I have a few ideas. Possibly integrating it into a word press blog and making it a Facebook related site like you suggested might work. That's something I could definatley look at doing.

I agree Facebook are getting cocky, I think they're starting to think they're invincible but I think the big G's plans might knock them back into line.

I am aware of one site using bit.ly's API to bypass the domain block, but I guess that will be blocked soon too. I suppose it will just be a case of cat and mouse unless you change your game plan.
 
This is a great thread and I learned so much on this just by reading the stuff here on Facebook and its banning fetish.

Keep it up guys, will be back for more learning. Cheers.
 
Like Farms huh? Very interesting I will have to look into this a bit further.
 
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