Here for Animals: “Liam and Theo were both killed in Afghanistan this past June […2019]. They were heroes fighting for freedom. May you both rest in peace”.

No, they were killed in March of 2011 (UK government), eight and a half years ago.

Here for Animals is using posts like this to intentionally hook people emotionally and get them to share the post on social media, thereby drawing more people to follow “Here for Animals”.

Their FB page has many photos of pets and working dogs with the same caption “I’ll bet I won’t even get one share” – which is click bait to share the item. As you can see from the official UK government statement (above) or the comment from one of Liam’s colleagues, the caption is wrong – the photo is from 2011. By claiming this was recent, it is more likely to be “shareable”.

This was shared into my FB feed today. The original post remains online and has been shared 58,000 times as of August 2019.

This purpose of this propaganda item is to hook the viewer, emotionally, into sharing it on Facebook, thereby increasing the visibility of Here for Animals in order to gather more followers. According to reviewers, this is what this group does – and steals the photos from elsewhere. This photo, above, is taken from the UK web site link above, where it is captioned “All rights reserved.”

On their Reviews page, others make the same observations:

One of the reviews posts this item – the page is managed in Kosovo – while presenting itself as based in New York City.

Their New York City address is actually that of a student housing dormitory.

This appears to be an online, social-media based, for profit business that is leveraging the frictionless sharing platform of Facebook for dollars.

One way to put a stop to these activities on Facebook is not to share anything unless you can vouch for it.

My sharing policy on FB is that I no longer share anything unless I created it myself or it was created by someone that I personally know. This is the only way to put a stop to these online, social media-based businesses that are stealing intellectual property and using emotional manipulation to further their own interests.