We’ve all seen it. Many of us have been the target of it. SPAM comments on Facebook are running rampant on ALL pages and even in groups and there is, unfortunately, little a page owner can do but patrol/moderate/block the offender as soon as they get a chance BUT (in the meantime), here is what YOU can do to protect YOURSELF and even HELP the page you are following.
Here are some examples of the type of SPAM we are talkin about:
All of these comments have something in common – They are NOT REAL people!
Sure, there’s a chance there is an actual human behind the postings instead of an AI but in many cases it’s just a bot, programmed and scheduled to post a certain number of times on a random or pre-selected number of the commenters of a video. NONE of these people are actual people that are looking for friends or customers, people who are honest and just want to help you or get to know you. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!
Here’s the BEST PLAN of action, should you encounter a SPAM comment like the ones above or if you are targeted by a SPAM BOT when you comment on the page.
- AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT RESPOND – they cannot do ANYTHING! If you do not reply to their comment or take any sort of action when you see these types of spam comments, it will just be a single comment left and nothing will happen after that. Eventually the admin or moderator will find it and delete/block the offender. So, if someone responds to one of your comments on the page with this garbage, SIMPLY IGNORE THEM! Forget about it and move on. They can’t do anything to you if you ignore them.
- YOU CAN REPORT OR HIDE THEM IF YOU WANT TO – Again, they cannot do anything as long as you do not engage with them but if you want to make their comment disappear immediately, you can report their comment as spam or hide their comment. This is NOT necessary as we WILL be by before long to ban them from the page but new comments will still come so, the easiest course of action is really to just ignore them.
- YOU DO NOT NEED TO TAG THE PAGE OR MODERATORS! – We do not need you to notify us by tagging the page (we generally never see tags anyway, as they get buried too quickly). We do not need you to send an email about the spammer, we will find them before too long during our own patrol/regular moderation of the pages. We do not need you to try to get the attention of a moderator. We regularly peruse all of our pages (we spend WAY, WAY more time doing this than pretty much any other content creator/influencer out there) because it’s important to us to keep our pages as clean and enjoyable as possible so WE WILL GET THEM! It’s only a matter of time. Almost never will spammers comments sit on the page for more than 24 hours unless somehow they were overlooked and if that happens, they STILL cannot do ANYTHING if you do not respond to them.
- Do not EVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, respond to these types of comments by sending a friend request to the offender!!! The best rule of thumb is to NOT reply to someone unless you personally KNOW them! Once you start interacting with the spammer, they may convince you to send them a friend request and once you do that, you have opened to the door to let them gain access to your profile, your personal information, and potentially your bank account and security info. IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE! It doesn’t matter what they say to you. They are NOT interested in finding out more about you, they are NOT trying to have a nice conversation, they do NOT want to date you. They want to steal your money or worse, your identity. DO NOT allow them access to you by engaging with them. NOT EVEN to tell them to piss off!
- IGNORE the garbage and ENJOY the page! Do not let these robots and scummy scammers steal your joy! Do not let them dissuade you from commenting and interacting on the page. They cannot DO ANYTHING to you unless you engage directly WITH them so just ignore them and go on about your business and you will be fine. 🙂