Inside Facebook

Although Facebook intended the Reviews application to help users learn more about an application’s quality, it has quickly become an easy place for developers to spammily increase their Reviews scores. There have been multiple cases over recent weeks of developers caught in the act, from the largest to the smallest.

In response, Facebook’s head of Platform Policy, Paul Jeffries, recently said, “When we discover fake accounts, we delete them to preserve the integrity of the Facebook community, and sometimes take further action. Of course, use of fake accounts by developers (or those acting as their proxy) to manipulate the review system is prohibited, and subject to policy enforcement measures such as a moratorium.”

However, Facebook is going to have to significantly update the way Reviews works to effectively fight this kind of spam. At a recent Developers Roundtable, Facebook indicated it was aware of the issue and doing just that. Even if Facebook just filtered out posts with links, that move alone would eliminate a good portion of spammy reviews.