Researchers have discovered a loophole in Facebook that has allowed users to tap into a ‘collusion network’ that generates automated likes and comments on posts.
The researchers with the University of Iowa and Lahore University of Management Science in Pakistan shared their findings with CBS News, saying they’d found dozens of sites operating fake ‘like’ networks.
The networks allow individuals or businesses to quickly generate ‘likes’ and comments for their content, the researchers said.
Facebook is believed to give higher weight to posts that generate more interactions, showing them higher up and more often.
Researchers have discovered a loophole in Facebook that has allowed users to tap into a ‘collusion network’ that generates automated likes and comments on posts.
The ‘likes’ from the come from both fake accounts and other real accounts that have tapped into the network to get ‘likes’ for their own content, the experts said.
That is one major issue with taking advantage of such exploits, they added – anyone who uses the networks to gin up false reactions could have their account hijacked to do the same for others in the network, or worse.
Facebook said in a statement that the collusion networks have now been blocked.
‘We have addressed the activity described in this research and we are no longer seeing it on our platform,’ a spokesperson said.
‘Meanwhile, we are investigating different techniques that could be used to generate inauthentic likes in smaller volumes. We will take the appropriate action to help ensure that connections and activity on our service are authentic,’ the statement continued.
The new findings come after Facebook revealed on Wednesday that it believed $100,000 in advertising spending appeared to originate in Russia during the 2016 US presidential election.
The researchers behind the report said they didn’t know if the exploit was used on content related to the election.
‘We do want to examine the Russia question,’ co-author Zubair Shafiq told CBS. He added that while they only looked at the top 50 networks, many more exist.
‘These collusion networks are quite possibly involved in orders of magnitude much larger than what we observed.’
The group’s full findings will be presented on November 1 at the Association for Computing Machinery Internet Measurement Conference in London.