Wednesday, September 4, 2013

ListenLikeURBlind on Facebook - A True Story

I want to tell you about a mystery that has actually been going on for awhile. Thing was, I didn't realize for the longest time that it even was a thing. Maybe it has affected you, too. Maybe that's why you're here. It's about "ListenLikeURBlind" or "Listen Like UR Blind", which labels itself a "Community" on Facebook.

One day a few weeks/months (not even sure now) ago, I noticed an unfamiliar page in my Facebook "Likes". I didn't remember clicking on anything called "ListenLikeURBlind", but chalked it up to some sort of error on my part. Maybe I had accidentally clicked something and it had happened that way. I unliked the page (I wasn't interested in it) and went on about my life, not thinking much about it.

Until this past week, that is. Because "ListenLikeURBlind" was mysteriously back in my Facebook Likes. Once was a coincidence; twice meant something was up.

I've changed my password twice. I've logged out of all other devices. I've run a virus check. I'm not hacked, because nothing else has been altered on my account and I'm not sending strange messages. The only thing that's going on is that "ListenLikeURBlind" keeps getting added to my Likes. It has happened at least 4 times now.

My first instinct was to get mad at the page itself. I wavered in this conviction when my investigations turned up things like this, which indicated Facebook itself might be responsible. Now, I am back to my original thinking. And I'll tell you why.

In my looking for information on ListenLikeURBlind, I came across this page on Top-on-Social. Please take particular note of the "Fan Changes" section, and how the "Talking Changes" seems to correspond in reverse - the more fans they accumulate, the less people are talking about them. Kinda curious, if you ask me. As of this writing, ListenLikeURBlind has 31,098 fans (give or take on the current page).

What was really interesting was when I clicked on the Google cache of the Top-on-Social page. It is from June 25, 2013. Do you see? On that date, ListenLikeURBlind only had 6,769 Facebook fans. That means that this page (which remember, I knew nothing about until it was added to my Likes) has accumulated almost 25,000 new fans in two and a half months. Color me skeptical on those numbers.

To compound my suspicions, I checked ListenLikeURBlind's Twitter feed. Not only is it unremarkable, but it only has 77 followers. In contrast to 31,098 (and growing!) on Facebook? HMMMMMMM!

Frankly, I don't know enough about how these things work to develop any theories about what exactly is going on here. Suffice to say, I can VERIFY via my own experience that ListenLikeURBlind is being added to Facebook user "Likes" without consent. It happened to me, so surely it has happened to others. And that makes ListenLikeURBlind's "fan numbers" suspect and (possibly) worthless. Just an FYI to anyone that cares.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I wrote this blog entry (pre-empting fun stuff) for a couple of reasons. One, because this was genuinely bugging me and I wanted to talk about it. But more importantly, I want this story out there for anyone that puts "ListenLikeURBlind" or "Listen Like UR Blind" into search engines. I honestly think the Twitter followers for this little enterprise are more representative of the actual level of interest than the Facebook fans; therefore, I think there's a pretty good chance this blog entry will find its way into the top matches for ListenLikeURBlind.

I've posted a question on Facebook's Help Community about this topic - it can be found here, if you are so inclined. My interest in ListenLikeURBlind is non-existent if it will stop being added to my Likes, and interestingly, it has not been since I posted that question. That was after three straight days of it mysteriously reappearing in my Likes. So, we'll see.

I don't know what is going on here, ListenLikeURBlind, but I am watching you. And I am not amused.

ListenLikeURBlind Linkage (if you dare):

ListenLikeURBlind Facebook

ListenLikeURBlind Twitter

ListenLikeURBlind Blog

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