By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post
Have you been noticing more garbage than usual in your Facebook feed? You aren’t imagining it, between spam accounts and AI generated junk, there’s a definite increase.
This summer I noticed something a little creepy in my feed. I’d get notifications that a page had changed its name, and it was always something wildly different than what the original page had been.
One page had been a cartoon and joke page, the other had been a page for an owl refuge.
Both changed to something completely different than the original intent of the pages, in one case overly religious imagery and junk and in the other spammy health product marketing.
I was a little taken aback at the obvious takeover of established accounts for unknown purposes.
Images of page name change notifications. Courtesy image
Image of newly taken over Facebook accounts. Courtesy image
Image of newly taken over Facebook accounts. Courtesy image
The changes were so dramatic I wondered if this was a trend. As it turns out, established Facebook accounts are cheap and easy to buy online. If an account is established, it’s less likely to raise any red flags with Facebook that there’s an issue. Spammers and scammers can easily purchase these accounts and change them to whatever they want, either to sell junk, or spam users with misinformation.
With the upcoming elections this is certainly problematic, as established pages could be taken over and used to promote whatever agendas the scammers want to promote. Unless users are paying close attention, they might never even notice the change to the page, and become an unwilling audience to it in their Facebook feeds.
Stay aware that Facebook and other social media sites can fall prey to scams like this, and take things that you see in your feed with a grain of salt. Keep an eye on your notifications, if a page you follow changes its name chances are you’ll get a notification, it’s just easy to lose it in the noise. In this case I just unfollowed these newly changed pages to avoid seeing their spam.
This kind of thing can be easily used to trick people, as the new page owners are handed a whole audience of followers who may or may not even notice the change.
Another thing to watch out for is the increasing amount of AI generated garbage in our feeds. I’ve seen posts in local NM groups purporting to be in NM, when actually the images are just AI generated junk. Why would they do this? To get likes and other interactions, which can be very profitable for a Facebook page. Or, in some cases, just to sow misinformation and promote whatever agenda the scammers want to push.
AI generated image claiming to be in the Jemez mountains in NM
The above image is obviously not in the Jemez, to anyone who’s been there, and is clearly AI generated, yet it got 695 likes. This can help the spammers promote their pages and reach, and make money. But like I said, it can also be used for more nefarious purposes, like sowing misinformation to promote a specific agenda.
Stay aware on Facebook; garbage and scams abound, and you can’t always trust that a page is what it says. If a page you follow dramatically changes overnight, just unfollow them, or even block them. And be aware that AI has made it incredibly easy to fake even complicated images to promote spam or scams.
Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.