Have you noticed this trend on Facebook?

No, but I don’t administer any groups.

I administer some groups but they’re private, so they’re not getting a lot of requests. If there are requests, it’s definitely a red flag if they’re a new account or only have a few friends.

I will pm the admin of a group if I see spam, and those accounts are often fake looking, for air duct cleaning or some bullshit. I also get friend requests from guys sometimes and the guys are always handsome and it says “single” or “widowed” and it’s so obvious that they’re fake.

I am admin of two groups of people in recovery, but because we are local to my area, it is easy to spot the fakes trying to join. My AA group does not have anyone from Asia or Africa in it, so when we get a join request from Dakar or Hyderabad, we reject it.

It is called the dead internet theory.
The future is an internet mostly populated by bots and AI generated content.
Where not only can you not discern real people from bots, real content, be it video, images, text, from AI-generated content, but where you will have to assume that any content you come across is more likely to be fake than real.

I am an admin on my wife’s sewing page. We have over 5,000 members.
Occasionally we get membership requests from a number of people who have joined Facebook recently. We reject them.

I don’t administer groups either, and the ones I am in, tend to have filter questions and/or moderators.

I do have a duo of blatant scammers and maybe AIs trying to hook me into a blatant fraud. One of them copied the account of a human FB friend. I have reported them to FB many times, in many ways, and they’re still kicking.

I’m not an admin, but I belong to 2 covid awareness/support groups and you have to answer several questions before you get admitted. It appears that most “odd” users get weeded out there. Most of the new users tend to say that they are new and that they are glad to have found the group(s), or they ask a question and say something like, “I don’t know if this has been covered before (subject), but I’m new to the group, and I’m not sure where to look.”

I am an admin on multiple groups and it has been a problem for a while. It really ramped up during covid, and is still going strong now.

I should add, and I’ve said it here a bunch of times, people shouldn’t use their personal photos as their profile photo, and everything else should be set to “friends only” or “private” not “public.” That way, nobody can copy your personal photo and use it to make a new profile. That is one thing that will help people not get hacked.

I see friends post things and their settings are set to “public” and then strangers comment “we’re not friends but I’d like to get to know you. Would you please send me a friend request?” or something like that. Why people have their settings on “public” I’ll never know. Maybe for the adoration, I don’t know but it’s just inviting hackers to learn about you and hack you.

I don’t administer any groups, but I have noticed that there’s a lot of these profiles around lately. And when they’re commenting on a post, they always seem to be trying to stir up trouble more than the average person.

Pretty standard….it’s either a bot, troll, or people in other countries in offices whose job it is to make fake accounts all day and stir up controversy or harass people.

I thought this was common knowledge….

^^New to me. I’ve been admin to a few groups since 2013 and noticed this specific pattern just recently.

@mazingerz88
It’s a tactic used by other countries to create division/generate clicks in America and other places.

^^This!