Spamming, Facebook, and Disincentives
Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been the subject of various major spam attempts.
One major issue is the size of the website, which hinders the ability of Facebook itself to monitor the spam attempts and their sources. Grouping Facebook users into two categories, there are some interesting effects that come out from its setup. The first category is composed of typical social networking users – people who would be affected by the spammers, while the second category is made of the spammers. Clearly, the users number significantly more than the spammers: users benefit the more of them there are and the less spammers there are. The network effects for this are strictly beneficial: if there are enough users for it to be worth registering, the network effects benefit all current users. Thus, the equilibrium is for Facebook to get as many users as possible.
The spammers, on the other hand, provide a negative network effect. They benefit from impacting regular users, either by scamming money or by disrupting the user experience to the detriment of the company itself. Both of these results are distinctly different – the first gains very little if there are more spammers, as more spammers means less regular users who will fall for the scams. If the spammers are trying to impact Facebook, however, any decrease in regular users or work on Facebook’s part to counteract them serves as a positive payoff.
Luckily, Facebook has defenses in place. Since spammers need to have several accounts, requiring a certain amount of information when registering adds to the cost of entry: if it is difficult to register an account, it will not be worth making those various accounts to spam the site. Unfortunately, this also affects regular users and provides a disincentive to joining the site, significantly hurting growth of the userbase. Rooting out the spammers has helped somewhat as well, as Facebook has won several notable court cases and at least two million dollars against major spammers. Providing major fiscal disincentive also works, which has led to Facebook aggressively hunting down spammers and hackers. While this does not preemptively stop the first few spammers, it makes the risks higher for later ones and decreases the likelihood that more will appear.
It remains to be seen how Facebook will do to improve its security after the latest attacks. One method pointed out is to patch security holes, making it more difficult for spammers without affecting users. In particular, revisions to the app development and authorization process will help this process. But who knows – if that does not work, we may eventually see a stricter authorization process. But for now, the only things that can be guaranteed are that spammers will still be trying and that Facebook will continue to try bringing them to court.
CNN Post: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/tech/social-media/facebook-hacking-security/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6