My instinctual response to rage at a system is an urge to systematically deconstruct its power.
The Scam
March 17th, 2022
While it may have begun sooner, the “look who just died” scam entered the Internet’s consciousness on March 17th, 2022 with a Reddit post on r/answers. The user reported that they received a message on Facebook Messenger claiming someone they knew died with a link to a site trying to steal their Facebook password. Users of the forum responded initially with advice for them to contact their friend to let them know their account was hacked, or to block the person if they were a stranger.
March 20th, 2022
The post then sat silent for three days before another user reported the same occurrence, having received such a message from a coworker. Unlike the initial poster, they clicked on the link and entered their login information. They soon realized their account was compromised when they saw their Facebook Messenger account had sent the same message to nearly all of their Facebook friends.
March 30th, 2022
Ten days later, another user reported their account was compromised by the same scam. They realized that not only had the scammer sent the message to all of their Facebook friends, but all of their Facebook contacts, including people they had unfriended. This the first occurrence of a user increasing their account security in response to being scammed – they enabled 2-factor authentication and revoked session cookies for active logins to be sure.To this point, there was no clear goal of the scammers. Why did they want control of people’s Facebook accounts?
April 5th, 2022
Another user reported experiencing the scam. But this time, they did not escape with only injuries to their pride. The scammers collected the payment information from this user’s account and stole $2,000 from their debit cards.Thus began a deluge of other Facebook users flocking to the Reddit post, with dozens of other reports and over a hundred total comments until July 2022.
May 9, 2022
On May 9, 2022 the online safety and fact-checking website ThatsNonsense.com reported on the scam. In the article, they point out that the message has several features which internet users should learn to look for that indicate the message is illegitimate. They also give advice for actions to take in the case a user has become a victim of the scam themselves.

(Image from snopes.com)
Days later, cable news began covering the scam, with WGAL – Lancaster/Harrisburg being one of the first to report on it. DuckDuckGo has indexed an MSN news report on the same day, but the article has since been deleted, most likely due to MSN changing the structure of its site. Broken link.
Interlude
Over the following months, dozens of news agencies reported on this scam, the money people lost, and how to spot it in the wild.
Evolution
The scam evolved into at least one other form in the coming months. Rather than reaching out via Facebook Messenger, the scammers took a screenshot of a paused video from the ABC News YouTube channel showing a wrecked car on the side of the road in Georgia, with debris scattered in the grass. They edited the metadata of the site to display a fake view count – implying that the video was highly viewed.

(screenshot by Will Beason)
To ensure the post would be prioritized in people’s feeds in the algorithm, the scammers did several things known to make sure posts appear in people’s feeds.
- They made sure that the generated link going to the malicious site had a thumbnail. Facebook prioritizes links which have valid thumbnails.
- They re-shared their own post. Facebook prioritizes “shared” posts over originals, even when a user shares their own post.
- They tagged exactly nine other people. This is a “sweet spot” where the notification of the tagging still shows up in people’s Facebook notifications, and it doesn’t trigger anti-spam measures. Further, notifications prompt people to view the post in order to get rid of the notification. While users may delete notifications without viewing the post, they have no means of knowing what they’re missing before clicking to view.
- They made the post public so that the post could potentially appear in anyone’s feed – even people they have not “friended” on Facebook.
Together, this nearly guarantees at least nine other people (those tagged) will see the post. The other measures mean the post itself is likely to be highly-ranked in all of their friends’ feeds and will likely be seen by many dozens of people. For those tagged – the friends who interact with them often are likely to see the post as this is another feature Facebook heavily weights in ranking posts to show on user feeds.
Facebook’s Responsibility
This scam has persisted for over a year despite national news coverage, many hacked accounts, and the simple, predictable nature of these interactions. In the 20 such posts above, all of them linked to the same domain and had an identical thumbnail. All of the posts in a similar period of time use identical wording. In the past few weeks, it has been “Just happened an accident” but the wording has differed over time. It would not be technically difficult to detect these posts: I am able to easily find dozens of such posts by searching for the wording-of-the-day using Facebook’s already-extant search feature. Presumably, Facebook has means of searching posts by the domain linked to and the number of people tagged, which would make identifying these posts even easier.
And yet, this scam goes on.
Reports
On August 11th, in a flurry of data collection (rage?), I conducted a search as described above, immediately finding 25 such scam posts. I went through the report process for each post:
- Three dots -> Report post
- Please select a problem -> Spam
- Submit
This creates an entry in the Facebook Support Inbox tied to my account.

The message assures that Facebook will use this information to identify spam, and more information about how Facebook deals with spam content.
Response
Facebook regularly responds to reports of spam. These do not happen on a regular timeframe – it isn’t clear how these are prioritized. I’ve had reports of this scam sit in my support inbox for months, and others are answered within days.In every case for this scam I have reported where I have gotten a response (~10 so far from August 11th reports), Facebook has responded with the following.

Sometimes the message gives an option to request a “re-review” of the content. Other times, the only options available are to block the compromised account or to delete the message from my support inbox. There isn’t a clear pattern here.
Example where I was able to request a re-review:

In no cases in the several months I have reported these scams has Facebook reported that one of these posts was taken down. I’ve reported about 40 in total.
Note: It is possible that Facebook removes messages from the support inbox – I have not verified that all of my reports still have entries.
Wherefore art thou, scam?
It is clear to users that these are scam posts. On many of these posts I’ve reported, friends of the person warn others not to click the link, and tell the person that their account has been compromised. Regular news coverage reports the impact on those who have lost money from the scam. Coverage on online safety sites have detailed information about the scam: how to spot it and how to recover.
But none of that matters because Facebook decides what is, or is not, a scam on Facebook.
~~ Fin ~~
Stopping here because I’m exhausted. I’m sure there’s neat implications to write about later. I hope you enjoyed my little weekend project.