The Sylvee creates new Facebook group after bots overrun comments, scam people for tickets

Emilie Burditt by Emilie Burditt

Copyright 2019 by Channel 3000. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Sylvee announced in a Facebook post Monday that it created a new Facebook group after event pages were overrun with bots.

The music venue disabled commenting on its Facebook event pages, but commenting is allowed in its new group, The Sylvee Backstage. This group is to be used to foster conversation about music, post concert photos, discuss upcoming shows and buy and sell tickets.

The Sylvee’s marketing manager, Justin Kibbel, said there could be about 500 to 600 comments that were trying to scam people for their money by offering tickets, sometimes to sold-out shows, and overtaking conversations. The tickets the bots were selling were not real.

“It was taking a lot of our time, (just going) through to delete all that and manage it, which got really frustrating,” Kibbel said. “Our notifications would just be overwhelmed with these fake posts, and so it was hard to address real customer service.”

Kibbel said the Sylvee brought the scams to the attention of Facebook Support multiple times. He said Facebook did nothing to help, which pushed the Sylvee to create the group and disable comments on event pages.

“It was just really hard to have conversations around the shows that were happening,” Kibbel said. “Hopefully, this Facebook group kind of helps with that and builds more of a community.”

The Sylvee Backstage is active. People are able to join after answering an initial forum.

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COPYRIGHT 2020 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.