Facebook spam asking users to “look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people” has gone viral again, proving that people don’t learn and like watching videos of girls in bikinis.
Facebook spam is nearly as old as the site itself, with the general theme being “clickbait” titles and thumbnails, often showing young women in various stages of undress, entice users to click the link and leave Facebook for a more disreputable site. Once a user has clicked through, the spam website either asks the user to confirm their details before spamming the same link onto their news feed, or as in this case the webpage hijacks the user’s browser and spams their newsfeed automatically – either way the link replicates itself and convinces more and more people to click.
Whilst a hardened internet and Facebook user will be easily able to spot these spam links because of the dodgy-looking URLs, the less experienced older users that are increasingly flooding to Facebook are less well-prepared, and apparently just as keen on seeing videos of half-naked women.
The internet is cyclical just like everything else, and whilst much of the younger generation has already learnt the hard way to avoid such spam links, there is now a growing number of older web users that can be taken in by a picture of a woman in a hot pink bikini and a description that reads
“During the summer holidays, this girl took the opportunity to do something unheard of! I bet no one can do the same”
It was nearly two years ago that this particular spam link first was first reported on, and I would bet we’ll probably see it again in 2016.
Visualisation by Paul Butler