The hoax claims that Facebook and CNN have teamed up to pay for half of the medical expenses for the child’s surgery, and it’s all dependent on how many likes, comments, and share the image receives. It claims that for every like, $20 will be put toward the cause. For every comment, it’s $50, and for every share, $100.

Here’s what the hoax post looks like:

The image is actually of Milagros Cerron, a little girl in Peru that’s known as the “mermaid baby” as a result of sirenomelia, or “mermaid syndrome.” She’s had surgeries to separate her legs, and the medical procedures are still ongoing. Although Milagros is now 9 years old, the photo used above to exploit Facebook likes was taken nearly 8 years ago.

This latest hoax is simply another version of the “Facebook will donate X for each like” hoax that we’ve seen increase in frequency over the past few years. Whether it’s saving starving children in Africa with a like, or making sure kids shot by their father get adequate medical attention, it’s all BS.

Facebook has not, and will never donate money to causes based on how many likes or shares a post gets. That means that every single one of these types of posts you see is a hoax. Don’t feed the like-whores, please.

Should a Facebook “like” be considered free speech, and protected under the First Amendment? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Carter appealed the decision, and Facebook stepped in to argue that a like is free speech in the same way that a political bumper sticker is. Facebook filed a brief in Carter’s defense, saying, “When a Facebook User Likes a Page on Facebook, she engages in speech protected by the First Amendment.”

“The district court’s holding that ”liking’’ a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection’ because it does not ‘involve actual statements,’ J.A. 1159, betrays amisunderstanding of the nature of the communication at issue and disregards well-settled Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit precedent,” the company continued. “Liking a Facebook Page (or other website) is core speech: it is a statement that will be viewed by a small group of Facebook Friends or by a vast community of online users.”

“When Carter clicked the Like button on the Facebook Page entitled ‘Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff,’ the words ‘Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff’ and a photo of Adams appeared on Carter’s Facebook Profile in a list of Pages Carter had Liked, J.A. 570, 578 – the 21st-century equivalent of a front-yard campaign sign,” Facebook continued. “If Carter had stood on a street corner and announced, ‘I like Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff,’ there would be no dispute that his statement was constitutionally protected speech. Carter made that very statement; the fact that he did it online, with a click of a computer’s mouse, does not deprive Carter’s speech of constitutional protection.”

The debate certainly has large ramifications for not only practices on Facebook, but on the Internet at large, which as we all know, has become very, very social.

This week, a panel of three judges in Richmond, Virginia heard the case, and Facebook once again stepped up to defend Carter, though really it’s a defense of Facebook users in general. It can’t be good for Facebook if people start becoming afraid of what they can or cannot say on Facebook. Some people have even talked about leaving the social network because they don’t allow pictures of breasts. More censorship can’t be good for user growth.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Tom Schoenberg, Facebook lawyer Aaron Panner told the judges, “Any suggestion that such communication has less than full constitutional protection would result in chilling the very valued means for communication the Internet has made possible.”

The company was reportedly given three minutes of argument time, and the judges refrained from asking Facebook any questions. The report also shares some quotes about Facebook “likes” from Robers’ lawyer:

“It’s like opening a door into a room,” Rosen, of Pender & Coward PC in Virginia Beach, Virginia, said. “You can’t see what’s in there until you click on the button. That’s not speech.”

“Facebook has 3 billion ‘like’ clicks a day,” he said. “Is each one of those speech? I don’t think so.”

As far as Facebook and many others are concerned, yes, each one of those is free speech.

At the same time, Roberts is claiming that the Facebook activity is not even the reason Carter (along with other employees) was fired, and that performance was the real reason. Still, the subject of the Facebook “like” remains the hot button issue, and has been argued throughout the case.

What do you think? Should a Facebook “like” be considered free speech, or do you not consider a “like” to be an act of speech at all? Let us know what you think in the comments.

“Bing already lets you view Facebook updates and comments from your friends in sidebar, but now you’ll also be able to add your own Likes and comments to your friends’ Facebook posts directly from Bing,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is yet another step in Bing’s efforts to make it easier for people to leverage all of the incredible information across the web and content within their social networks to help them spend less time searching and more time doing.”

“Say you’re a huge Beyoncé fan and are searching Bing to see what she’s up to, such as the latest on her trip to Cuba,” the spokesperson says. “While searching, you see a post in Bing’s sidebar from a Facebook friend who has an extra ticket to the sold out Beyoncé concert this week. With Bing, you can now comment on your friend’s Facebook post in one step, directly in sidebar, and claim the extra ticket. You’ve gone from simply browsing for news to attending the concert in one simple step. With Bing’s social search you can connect with your friends and engage with your social world to get things done – all in one spot.”

Of course none of this applies to the “Bing it On” challenge, which Microsoft just kicked off a new campaign for. The site, which lets you do side-by-side blind comparisons between Google and Bing results, strips out special features from each search engine, including Bing’s Facebook integration and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Bing continues to be a major partner of Facebook’s, also providing the web search results to Facebook’s Graph Search.

The United Nations Children’s Fund Sweden division is calling people out with a powerful new ad campaign: we need money for polio vaccines and your slacktivism isn’t helping.

“Like is on Facebook, and we will vaccinate zero children against polio,” reads a press ad developed pro bono by ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors. “We have nothing against likes, but vaccines cost money. Please buy a polio vaccine at unicef.se. It will only cost you 4 euros, but will save the lives of 12 children.”

The campaign, which is running in print, television, radio, and online, also has a powerful video ad featuring a 10-year-old boy named Rahim.

“My name is Rahim. I’m 10 years old and I live here with my brother,” says the boy as the camera zooms in on a ragged apartment. “Sometimes I worry that I will get sick, like mom got sick. Then who will look after my brother?”

“But I think everything will be alright. Today, UNICEF Sweden has 177,000 likes on Facebook. Maybe they will reach 200,000 by summer. Then we should be alright.”

With the rise of social media, we’ve also seen a rise in “armchair activism” or “slacktivism,” the terms used to describe lazy attempts to support a cause via social media. One prime example was last year’s Kony 2012 campaign, which saw millions of Facebook and Twitter users share viral video about the atrocities of Ugandan LRA leader Joseph Kony.

But you can see fragmented slacktivist campaigns every day on Facebook. “Like this photo and this baby gets the transplant it needs” and so on. Sure, clicking like or sharing a status may make you feel good, but it doesn’t accomplish much more than that.

[Images via UNICEF Sweden]

49-year-old Thomas Troy Young admitted to stabbing his 33-year-old wife Carla Brown back in March over her Facebook actions. Reportedly, Young stabbed Brown because he was angry that she had liked someone else’s post on the site.

According to court records, Young and Brown were fighting in their bedroom on the night of March 10th. Later, after Young had left the house, Brown’s daughter found her in the locked room lying on the floor, covered in blood.

Brown had multiple stab wounds to her face, neck, back, and hand. She also suffered a punctured lung as a result of the attack.

Records indicate that Young also tried to strangle her with a plastic warm-up suit, and threatened to kill her children if she attempted to get help.

“If he was going to jail for one murder it didn’t matter to him if it was three or more,” Young reportedly said to Brown.

Young, who has had assault charges filed on him in the past, is scheduled for trial on May 22nd.

Sadly, this isn’t even close to the first time that we’ve seen domestic altercations linked to something ridiculous involving Facebook. In 2011, a Texas man was charged with battery after he allegedly punched his wife in the face for failing to like one of his Facebook statuses. Last year, a drunk guy called 911 on his wife after she refused to allow him to browse Facebook in peace. Also, you probably remember the guy who assaulted his girlfriend after seeing a photo of an unfamiliar man on her Facebook Timeline. That man turned out to be former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

[Philly Burbs via Daily Dot]

Long story short – they’re quite revealing. The researchers were able to accurately predict subjects’ activities and personality traits based on what they liked on Facebook, even when those likes weren’t specifically about the particular proclivities. For instance, a user didn’t have to like the page “I love being gay” in order for researchers to determine that the user was indeed gay. Around 80% of the time, they could rightly infer it based on other sorts of likes, for instance “Britney Spears” or the show “Desperate Housewives.”

The bottom line is that your likes tell a lot about you, and unless you go to great lengths to make your 100, 200, maybe even thousands of likes non-public, people are going to be able to make judgements about you.

Such the rub when you use a public social network. Deal with it or don’t, it’s up to you.

The Colbert Report looked into the topic of these revealing Facebook likes, and basically came to this conclusion:

“Facebook likes can reveal your personality traits, just as Friendster likes can reveal that you stopped using the internet in 2003.”

No, wait, that’s not a conclusion. That’s just a Friendster jab. Low hanging fruit there, Colbert.

“I don’t need some study to tell me who’s gay and who isn’t. That’s what scarves are for.”

It appears that Facebook is putting an obstacle between users and their ability to unlike pages that they follow. Well, Facebook hasn’t really added anything – they’ve removed a shortcut which pretty much amounts to the same result.

Anyway, users of the new news feed are no longer given the option to unlike a page directly after hiding one of the page’s post inside the news feed.

After hiding a post in the old new feed, here’s what it looks like:

Now, here’s what it looks like with the new news feed:

Notice that the unlike link is gone?

Now, if a user wants to unlike a page (and they very well might, since they’re hiding posts from that page), they’ll have to visit the page first and unlike it from there.

This could simply be an accidental removal – the new news feed is still in beta. But if we assume that Facebook has done this purposefully and permanently, it suggests that Facebook is doing all they can to keep people liking things. Because without all of those likes, how would Facebook know anything about users for targeting purposes? Sure, a user can hide a page’s posts – but if that like remains then Facebook retains that specific crumb of data. And every little crumb matters.

As Inside Facebook points out, this could also lead to page owners seeing less reach from their posts, even though likes seem to be staying stable or even increasing.

I’ve reached out to Facebook and will update when I hear back.

Sure, you could easily do this by liking the “Gay Men’s Alliance for Rolling Joints #420″ page (I don’t think this really exists, just an example). But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about people being able to accurately predict your lifestyle choices and personality traits by simply analyzing the combination of things you like on Facebook.

And by doing that, bring to light things that you may have purposefully tried to keep hidden.

Have you ever had a problem or been put in an awkward situation because of something you liked on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

You may not think that liking a page like “that’s going in my status when I get home” would allow people to infer that you’re a teetotaler, or that liking the Weight Watchers page tips off that you’re in a relationship, but new research suggests that your likes (even the ones you may find innocuous) are much more telling than you may think.

Baby, you like that?

The study comes to us from the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge and was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS). Researchers looked at over 58,000 Facebook users and found that they were able to accurately predict “a range of highly sensitive personal attributes,” including things like ethnicity, religious affiliations, sexual orientation, intelligence, drug use, political views, and more, by simply analyzing the subject’s likes on the site.

For instance, using Facebook likes, the researchers were able to correctly categorize white vs. black 95% of the time and male vs. female 93% of the time. They were correct in their predictions about a users’ sexual orientation over 80% of the time, and could distinguish between Christianity vs. Islam in 82% of the circumstances.

And as you may expect, the researchers were more accurate with their predictions when they had more likes to work with.

“[E]ven knowing a single random Like for a given user can result in nonnegligible prediction accuracy. Knowing further likes increases the accuracy but with diminishing returns from each additional piece of information.”

So simply knowing one thing that you like on Facebook could help someone determine a fact about you, like your age, gender, or sexual orientation. And the more likes that are available, the more likely someone is going to be able to predict many of your attributes (up to a certain point).

Succinctly put, “individual traits and attributes can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy based on records of users’ likes.”

What’s interesting is how the researchers made their inferences. “Few users were associated with Likes explicitly revealing their attributes,” according to the study. That means that the likes that tipped off the analysts weren’t blatant declarations of personality and lifestyle traits. For example, less the 5% of users that the analysts predicted to be gay liked specifically gay groups like “Being Gay” or “I love being gay.” The analyst’s predictions were based on much more subtle indicators such as liking pages for “Britney Spears” or “Desperate Housewives.”

In other words, your likes betray you, good ladies and sirs.

The researchers outline their nightmare scenario as such:

On the other hand, the predictability of individual attributes from digital records of behavior may have considerable negative implications, because it can easily be applied to large numbers of people without obtaining their individual consent and without them noticing. Commercial companies, governmental institutions, or even one’s Facebook friends could use software to infer attributes such as intelligence, sexual orientation, or political views that an individual may not have intended to share.

One can imagine situations in which such predictions, even if incorrect, could pose a threat to an individual’s well-being, freedom, or even life. Importantly, given the ever-increasing amount of digital traces people leave behind, it becomes difficult for individuals to control which of their attributes are being revealed. For example, merely avoiding explicitly homosexual content may be insufficient to prevent others from discovering one’s sexual orientation

Of course, it’s important to note that this is in no way exclusive to Facebook likes.

“Similarity between Facebook Likes and other widespread kinds of digital records, such as browsing histories, search queries, or purchase histories suggests that the potential to reveal users’ attributes is unlikely to be limited to likes,” they say.

But likes are unique in that, most of the time, the information in much more available to the public than a browsing history, for example. Facebook has over a billion monthly active users, and a good number of them like hundreds and even thousands of individual items of content on the site. It’s interesting (and probably unnerving to many people) that analysts were able to determine many personality traits with such accuracy simply by combing through a users’ liking habits.

An outing on Facebook

Likes aren’t the only kind of Facebook action that can “out” someone, exposing information that they wanted to keep private to the wrong people.

Last October, we talked about a privacy flaw inside Facebook’s Groups that led to two gay college students being outed to their families.

As the story goes, the two University of Texas students were added to a Facebook group called “Queer Chorus” by the group’s creator. As you’re probably aware, Facebook allows friends to add other friends to groups that they create.

When the two students were added, Facebook generated a story about the event, which was published on their parents’ news feeds. Although both students had customized privacy settings that disallowed their parents from seeing certain posts, this story that they had been added to the “Queer Chorus” group somehow made it to their parents eyes.

How?

Simple. There are three types of groups that users can create on Facebook: Open, Closed, and Secret. And Facebook allows for friends to see that you’ve been added to Open and Closed groups.

“Similar to being tagged in a photo, you can only be added to a group by one of your friends. When a friend adds you to a group, a story in the group (and in news feed for Open or Closed groups) will indicate that your friend has added you to a group,” says Facebook.

“When a friend adds you to a group, you’ll get a notification right away, [and] you can leave a group anytime. To do so, just go to the group page and click “Leave Group” in the right-hand column. Once you leave a group, you can’t be added by anyone else unless you explicitly request to be re-added.”

So, you can leave the group if you want. But there’s nothing to stop people from seeing that you were added to it (assuming it’s an open or closed group).

There’s also a bit of misinformation when it comes to the notifications users receive when they’re added to a group. The notifications can make it seem like the user was only invited, when in fact they can appear in friends’ news feeds as having been “added.”

Sounds a bit anecdotal, I know. But it’s just another example of how non-direct, contextual info derived from Facebook actions can be used to infer certain things about a user – often at a heavy price to that user.

Likes, and privacy by obscurity

As you probably know (although there’s a chance you haven’t received it yet), Facebook unveiled their new Graph Search product in January. With Graph Search Facebook is looking to index all of the data on their massive graph and make it easily searchable and cross-reference-able.

With the unveiling of any new product, especially one involving search, Facebook is going to come under fire from those concerned with privacy. Facebook has made a point to reassure users that Graph Search will in no way affect their privacy. And in a way, Facebook is being completely genuine here. Basically, if a random person could find the info before Graph Search, they’ll be able to find it with Graph Search. If they couldn’t find it before, Graph Search won’t just suddenly throw it out in the open.

Facebook is not changing any of the privacy details on any of your posts, photos, or likes. You can trust them on that.

But there is something to the privacy concerns revolving around Graph Search. First, Facebook removed the ability for users to opt out of being featured in search results. This happened back in December, well before Facebook announced Graph Search.

“Everyone used to have a setting called ‘Who can look up my timeline by name,’ which controlled if someone could be found when other people typed their name into the Facebook search bar. The setting was very limited in scope, and didn’t prevent people from finding others in many other ways across the site,” said Facebook at the time.

Because of this “limited scope,” Facebook retired the setting. Now, everyone can be found with Facebook search. And since Graph Search is powered by “likes,” that means that Graph Search has made it easier for people to find information about you and your likes.

Here’s how I explained the concept of privacy by obscurity then:

It’s not that any of your information is any more public than it already was. Once again, Facebook isn’t lying about that. You’ll probably be found more often simply because Graph Search is a better search tool that makes it easier to find stuff.

Previously, Facebook users could rest on the principle of security through obscurity (or privacy by obscurity, for our purposes). That line of thinking goes something like this:

“Sure, I have some public information out there. But unless someone is specifically looking for it or for me, it’s kind of hard to find.”

And that line of thinking is true, for most circumstances. If I wanted to find you, I would have to be actively looking for you. There was no real, reliable way to simply stumble upon your Facebook profile (with consistency), and definitely no way to find you based on your likes, photos, and interests.

Now there is, of course. If I search “people from Hoboken that like Bon Jovi,” your name may pop up. I don’t know you, and I never would have organically searched for you. But Graph Search has led me to you, and your adorable puppy photos, and information on your penchant for fine wines and spirits. I basically know you now.

So, what can you do about it? Luckily for you, Facebook provides a way to prevent other users from determining things about you based on your likes. All you have to do edit the visibility of your likes. Just go to your settings, access you likes, and you’ll find that each like group has an option to make itself private. This process can be tedious, but if you want to stop people from knowing everything that you like and making inferences from it, this is pretty much the only way. Other than quitting Facebook.

Final Thoughts

Of course, the big issue of the study is that this information was inferred from likes, not just any information available on Facebook. Even if you choose to leave the “religion” or “interested in” sections of your About page blank, there’s a chance that those things could be discovered simply by looking at public info on your likes.

If you’re concerned about your likes giving you away, one simple but somewhat tedious solution involves changing the visibility of your likes – something that more people may be thinking about anyway thanks to Facebook’s new Graph Search. Another solution could be to simply be more careful with what you like. If you don’t want people to know/think that you’re a strict Christian, maybe you should stay away from liking pages that you think would tip it off.

But the bottom line is that likes are one of the vertebrae in the backbone of Facebook. Likes make the world go round. And it’s nearly impossible to have a real Facebook experience without liking things. You can fine tune your privacy all you want (and that’s strongly suggested), but in the end, this is Facebook’s bread and butter. Being surprised that Facebook likes could possibly be telling of your personality is like being surprised that someone could infer your team allegiance from your Green Bay Packers jersey and that giant block of cheese on your head.

Do you think about how people judge you based on what you like on Facebook? If so, do you care? Are you concerned about people discovering things through likes that you may have thought was hidden? Let us know in the comments.

Yesterday, we told you about the cute kids who won a new puppy, after their parents told them they could get one if they could generate 1 million Facebook likes. The kids posted a cute picture, and 13 hours later had a million likes. Now, the stubborn parents have to get their kids a puppy. Kids: 1. Facebook: 1. Social media-underestimating parents: 0.

Now, it looks like some dude might just get to hook up with a girl because Facebook users are the ultimate bros.

Petter Kverneng posted this photo to his Facebook Timeline 22 hours ago:

As of right now, the photo has nearly 1.3 million likes. It looks like Petter may be getting some action.

Or, not, you know. Facebook likes aren’t a binding agreement. Norwegian site verdalingen.no reports that the two posted the photo as a joke with friends, and that Petter and the girl, Catherine (both 20), have never been romantically linked. BUT, they say they’re going to go through with it.

Mashable says that the photo was posted to 4chan’s /b random board, which would explain its meteoric rise.

Good for you, Petter. I guess. Or not. It’s kind of weird I guess. But then again, you could’ve just done it without involving Facebook. Freakin’ kids.

Like this photo and me and my siblings will get a brand new puppy? Yeah! Wait, what?

A couple of girls have successfully completed a Facebook like campaign in order to receive a new puppy. Five siblings from Massachusetts wanted a new dog after their old one died of cancer, but the parents were being a-holes reluctant. So, they told the kids that they could have a puppy if they could get a million Facebook likes. Simple enough, right?

Well, actually, yes. Here’s what the two oldest girls posted on their “Twogirlsandapuppy” Facebook page:

“Hi, We’re two sisters and we desperately want a puppy. We have three little brothers, too. Yes, we have five kids in our family. We lost our dog several months ago to cancer. We really want another one but our parents are reluctant. Then the other day we saw a brother and sister on facebook post a picture saying that their dad would let them get a dog if they get a ton of likes. We got our dad to agree to it! He said if we get 1 million likes we get a new puppy. He doesn’t think we can do it.”

In less than a day (13 hours, to be exact), the cover photo you see above had garnered a million likes.

“Our profile picture just hit 1,000,000. Mom and Dad are officially stunned. Will have five ecstatic kids in the morning,” posted the dad on the page.

The photo currently sits at over 1.6 million likes. It looks like the Cordell family will receive that puppy after all. In an appearance on Good Morning America, the dad said that he simply didn’t think it would spread that far, so fast. Welcome to Facebook, buddy.

For those of you concerned about the source of the dog you made happen with your likes, the family says that they will get a rescue from either a local shelter or a rescue organization.