Interesting Article re Facebook Competitions

Enigmatic_Me

I am in a local area group (not comp related) and someone has posted this on the page as we posts things re scams, neighbourhood watch etc.

https://medium.com/scams-scotland/facebook-like-and-share-competitions-are-a-scam-heres-why-2eb3d37cd9cb#.1d3e4o277

nanto3girls

Interesting...........

LadyMorticia

The promoter might not be able to see all likes or shares, but there are third party apps that will allow you to choose a random winner from all the people who have liked or shared, so even though the promoter can't see every entrants name, the third party app can.

2013yearofthehouse

Something similar crossed my mind yesterday......

I was looking at the results of a competition, where you only had to like to enter. There were about 500 likes and about 290 comments. Not only had all 5 winners commented, but their comments were the only comments that had been liked by the company running the comp. Could just be a coincidence, but does also seem a bit like they picked from the comments maybe?

https://www.facebook.com/heatholders/photos/a.162027177168944.29617.121830721188590/1164877480217237/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/heatholders/posts/1165884713449847

Blueyez

2013yearofthehouse wrote: »

Something similar crossed my mind yesterday......

I was looking at the results of a competition, where you only had to like to enter. There were about 500 likes and about 290 comments. Not only had all 5 winners commented, but their comments were the only comments that had been liked by the company running the comp. Could just be a coincidence, but does also seem a bit like they picked from the comments maybe?

https://www.facebook.com/heatholders/photos/a.162027177168944.29617.121830721188590/1164877480217237/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/heatholders/posts/1165884713449847

seen this on few comps, the company like a few comments then their winner comes from there.

mjm3346

but have you ever wondered why huge companies don’t do these competitions?

No I haven't because they do.

ScottMcGready

Hey everyone, thanks for sharing this article here. I'm Scott, the author and person that runs ScamsScotland on behalf of Neighbourhood Watch Scotland and Trading Standards Scotland. I thought I'd give some feedback here to some of the comments left on the thread.

LadyMorticia wrote: »

The promoter might not be able to see all likes or shares, but there are third party apps that will allow you to choose a random winner from all the people who have liked or shared, so even though the promoter can't see every entrants name, the third party app can.

Correct. I'm a developer and have built a few facebook apps with the sole purpose of collecting email addresses/contact details for competitions (legitimate ones) in the past and can confirm that this is correct. However, about 90% of the like and share competitions you see are just sharing an image, or a status. That's something that you cannot access via a third party app or API.

The third party apps cannot see if you've liked / shared a status unless you specifically allow them full access to your profile however. I know this because I built a shopping site years ago that focused on social deals (share this product with your friends and earn a discount). It was extremely difficult to pin down who shared what, when, and with whom. That said, excellent point LadyMorticia.

2013yearofthehouse wrote: »

Something similar crossed my mind yesterday......

I was looking at the results of a competition, where you only had to like to enter. There were about 500 likes and about 290 comments. Not only had all 5 winners commented, but their comments were the only comments that had been liked by the company running the comp. Could just be a coincidence, but does also seem a bit like they picked from the comments maybe?

Comments are usually easier to pick from as facebook doesn't hide most of them from page owners. Comments for page owners display a little differently. You can order them by relevance or chronological order. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook had some sort of algorithm to hide various comments for page owners as their whole business model revolves around businesses who use facebook to pay to reach more customers (even if they've liked your page).

If you have a look at any competition like this, nine times out of ten the winners will have commented on the link. I covered that in my post, and while they might win - that still doesn't change the fact the business hasn't included all entrants. Which I believe is wrong.

mjm3346 wrote: »

No I haven't because they do.

Actually they don't. If they do, they're risking their social media presence being wiped out by Facebook. Unless of course they're running the competition via a third party app that requests information from you. Long story short - if it's a simple "like/share this image" competition, it's not legitimate.

I know this is quite a divisive topic so feel free to ask me questions here, over on the facebook page (Scams Scotland), or on the medium article directly. More than happy to explain where I'm coming from and help you guys win legitimate competitions.

BlueBella

Hi Scott, Thanks for offering to answer our questions

I was wondering then - if a company asks us to like and share a post to win a prize on Facebook, then can get away with just liking and commenting on the post and miss out on the sharing as they can not see if we have shared anyway?

Thank you x

mjm3346

ScottMcGready wrote: »

Actually they don't. If they do, they're risking their social media presence being wiped out by Facebook. Unless of course they're running the competition via a third party app that requests information from you. Long story short - if it's a simple "like/share this image" competition, it's not legitimate.

I know this is quite a divisive topic so feel free to ask me questions here, over on the facebook page (Scams Scotland), or on the medium article directly. More than happy to explain where I'm coming from and help you guys win legitimate competitions.

If a company is prepared to break FB policies (not the law) who knows what else they may do but even if it is dodgy the possible downside to an individual is they have wasted maybe 5 seconds liking a page/post while on the upside they could win something worth far more than 5 seconds of their time.

Without looking hard I know 3 companies with billion pound plus turnovers who run "like" competitions, (some sites say about entries not being considered if certain things are disabled in FB privacy settings).

ScottMcGready

BlueBella wrote: »

Hi Scott, Thanks for offering to answer our questions

I was wondering then - if a company asks us to like and share a post to win a prize on Facebook, then can get away with just liking and commenting on the post and miss out on the sharing as they can not see if we have shared anyway?

Thank you x

You're more than welcome. Happy to help where I can!

While I think competitions like this are totally wrong and would discourage anyone from interacting with them in any way, I like how you're thinking of ways to beat the system! If you want to do this, I'd say just commenting on the post would be enough - again, I cannot see who liked/shared a post on any of my pages - only the comments can be relied on. That said, I have personally seen businesses trawl through "entrants" profiles to see if they're worthy of the prize. Now I'm not saying every business does this, but the ones I've seen specifically go on peoples profiles to see if they're:

1. A full time comper
2. Have loads of friends that will see the share
3. Are likely to interact with future posts

It sounds horrible but it indeed happens quite a lot.

Long story short - my official advice is to stay away completely from competitions like this... however if you absolutely wanted to enter and were looking to cut down on the amount of things you had to do, I'd say just commenting on the status/post/image would be more than plenty.

mjm3346

BlueBella wrote: »

Hi Scott, Thanks for offering to answer our questions

I was wondering then - if a company asks us to like and share a post to win a prize on Facebook, then can get away with just liking and commenting on the post and miss out on the sharing as they can not see if we have shared anyway?

Thank you x

Accepting they are not meant to ask, the "share" usually has to be public and if it does not show as a share when they look at the "shares" on the actual post they could check that the person chosen has shared by looking at their timeline.