Open Source How To: Hook Teams to Social Media

January 19, 2022

I read “Internal Facebook Note: Here Is A “Psychological Trick” To Target Teens.” Interesting stuff. One of the insightful items in the write up is that Facebook shut down the TBH operation. Well, that’s an assertion which a prudent person may want to verify. The write up also contains one of the Cambridge Analytica-type insights, a mini step by step guide to hooking a target sector.

Here’s the how to:

TBH noticed that teens often list their high school in their Instagram bio. So, using a private Instagram account of its own, the company would visit a school’s location page and follow all accounts that included the school’s name. TBH made sure its private account featured a mysterious call to action — something like “You’ve been invited to the new RHS app — stay tuned!” The startup would make one private account for each high school it wanted to target. The company found teens were naturally curious and would follow the private account back.

Helpful, particularly to bad actors without access to a pool of psychological tricks.

Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2022

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