[IAmGraydon]

Call me cynical, but I'm betting USA Today paid for millions of fake followers to pump up their stats (making them a more attractive platform for native advertising), got wind that Facebook was onto them and decided to break the story first and act like they were the ones to tell Facebook about it in the first place to save face. Nowhere else besides this woman's quote does it say that Facebook initiated their bot-destroying campaign after USA Today told them about all of their fake followers. They're lying, plain and simple.

[chuckdries]

And this is based on... what, exactly?

1. They didn't break the story, CJR did.

2. Why would they buy so many likes? In my experience, native ad sales revolve around native metrics. Buying bots to like your page (but not visit or interact with your website) won't help you there.

[IAmGraydon]

It's based on being cynical due to working in marketing for 15 years. Obviously I'm only speculating. I mentioned native ad sales because sites that engage in native marketing typically sell a package that includes posting the native content to their Facebook page, which has X number of followers. The higher that number, obviously the more attractive it is.