By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
Facebook can be awful, and one of the more annoying things about it lately is the proliferation of spammy/scammy state-themed groups.
See example image below:
Example NM Themed Group
Courtesy image
The below post was in one of these groups last week, and it was just reposting old content from the big snowstorm we had in May. These groups’ admins just grab content from other pages and users and post it in their group.
Example Post
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What’s the point of these groups? Pretty simple – to make money. The more interactions they get from users on their posts, the more engagement and followers they get, the more they can monetize their content and make money. They also use these pages to sell hideous, AI-generated garbage like the below image of a NM themed quilt.
The scam is always the same, they say that their autistic kid designed it, and won’t you please support by buying it. A really sneaky aspect of this scam is that they will change some posts to this image, so users will think they are sharing a cool picture of New Mexico, but then it gets changed to a post selling these quilts.
Example of Quilt Scam
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And it’s not just New Mexico groups, there are groups for every state that are just total spam mills, stealing content and reposting, and then using the exact image as the above to try to sell these scam quilts. See image below, from a Louisiana themed group, using the exact same story about the autistic child designing it, just the quilt design has been updated to be Louisiana themed.
Another Example of Quilt Scam
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I would definitely not click any of the links to purchase these, either it’s a scam and you’ll never get the quilt (or it will just be super low quality), or your personal or financial information will get stolen.
It can be hard to avoid these pages, they repost some fun stuff, and accumulate followers so they look legit, just be cautious of which groups you join. If you see any ads for quilts, t-shirts, etc. you have probably landed on a spam group. Also you will notice in these groups the admins have profiles that pretty clearly indicate they are not in the state of the group they claim to be in. Another thing to watch out for – the admins are usually the primary posters in these groups. And you will notice that the material is just reposted from other pages.
Be cautious when joining Facebook groups, and watch out for the scammy and spammy ones.
Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
