Facebook sues four individuals for providing fake engagement services

Facebook said Tuesday it has filed separate lawsuits against four individuals providing fake engagement services that are intended to artificially inflate likes and followers on Instagram.

The social media giant is suing Sean Heilweil and Jarrett Lusso, based in New York, who provided their service using the website boostgram.com and Laila Abou Trabi and Robin Abou Trabi, based in Dubai, who used the website instant-fans.com for violating Instagram's Terms of Use, Policies, and Community Guidelines.

While Boostgram used a network of bots to automate the delivery of likes and followers of Instagram accounts, Instant-fans.com used a network of bots and automation software to offer fake engagement services for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other web services. The latter provides fake engagement services to both individual customers as well as other fake engagement services known as "commercial resellers" of fake engagement.

Apart from this, Facebook, based on the users' complaints, has taken action against businesses running online scams. The social media giant has disabled accounts and sent cease and desist letters to seven businesses in Asia and Europe that were defrauding online users who purchased items from their sites.

These companies posted consumer product ads on Facebook and Instagram and when someone clicked the link in the ad, the user was redirected to a third-party website to complete their purchase. After paying for the item, the user either never received the item or received an item that is different than the item described in the ad. Consumers were unable to return items or obtain a refund.