Some MPs do better online than others. Some are great at applying their innate interpersonal skills into online interactions whether over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, their own blogs and many of the other online platforms. These people tend to attract interest in their posts and properties in an organic manner. I’ve highlighted many of these people in analysis on my blog and I conduct a regular interview series. It’s all non-partisan. I like to joke that there’s plenty of praise and constructive feedback to go around to all political stripes.

Some MPs are not so good at the online world. They may actually be good at presenting content and themselves, and interacting with others in a productive way yet still feel like, despite their best efforts, the small amount of participation on a public scale reflects poorly on them. These are the people who measure success by the number of likes, shares, retweets and follows they get, rather than the depth of the relationship they have with the public — both supporters and critics.

For those people, there are click farms. And, while it’s hard to specifically prove that they use click farms, there are breadcrumbs.

A click farm is a service you can pay for which gets collection of unique Facebook accounts (in this example) to “like” your Facebook posts. This drives up the relevance of your posts in an effort to game Facebook to put your content in more Facebook news feeds — of those who follow you and, with any luck, those who don’t yet follow you.

This is also called “astroturfing.” Others call it “click fraud.”

I was alerted to a possible case of this earlier today. Conservative MP Stella Ambler is enjoying hundreds of likes on a slew of Facebook posts. This is unusual for an MP. In fact, her most recent post (a photo with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie) has 450 likes. Dig deeper into the accounts and you’ll find that many, very many, of the likes are from Facebook users in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In fact, of the 27 comments left on the Chris Christie photo as of 10:30am, today, 12 come from commenters who report living in Pakistan, six from residents of India, one each from Algeria, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and two profiles were incomplete. That means at most, four of the 27 come from Canadians, possibly Ms. Ambler’s constituents. The substance of most of the comments is nothing to write home about, really.

At a higher level, Ms. Ambler’s Facebook Fan Page has 16,337 likes. That’s hot on the heels of social media savvy and high profile senior cabinet minister Jason Kenney (17,133), and well ahead of another social media savvy caucus mate Michelle Rempel (7,677).