I’ve been getting contacted a lot by Hashtag Media and Uprise Media, both located in the UAE, with lucrative offers to monetize my Facebook page with ads and videos. Their offers sound very much like the scam offers where they steal your page, but there’s no evidence that they have actually done that. There’s just a lot of reasons the companies seem suspicious, and I think people should exercise caution when handing over access to their Facebook pages.
Read on to see why it sounds like a potential scam, and please comment if you have worked with them! I couldn’t find any references to either company online besides their own websites. That’s why I wrote this post, so maybe other people would share their experience and we can figure out the whole story.
*I added some updated info at the bottom, because now a few people from Uprise Media have contacted me to ask me to take down this post. I’m only stating my personal opinion that it seems like a scam and providing some facts that I have based my opinion on. I have not worked with this company personally. (Because you know… it sounded scammy)
Reasons Why I’m Suspicious of Uprise and Hashtag Media
I’ve been getting e-mails from Hashtag Media for a while, but Uprise is the newest one. Don’t get this confused with Uprise Media located in the US. This post is specifically about the companies from the UAE.
This is just one of the messages I’ve gotten from Hashtag Media, always from a different person, usually with a Gmail address. The one I got from Uprise Media was the same, with the same offer:
Google Has Little Info on Them
You know what’s really hard to Google? A company with the name hashtag in it. Everything about hashtags pops up, and nothing about the actual company. I can’t find any evidence of anyone working with them, good or bad. And if you try to look for Uprise, there’s a bunch of companies with that name, including a well-established US agency! It feels like they are making themselves hard to research.
The Agency Websites Are Sketchy
Once I was able to track down their websites, I ran them through the scam site checker and they showed very little traffic for a supposed big agency, so that was suspicious. Also, the websites were very generic. And an interesting note, when I checked out Uprise, I saw it was owned by Hashtag Media! Very suspicious! Why would they have two agencies doing the same thing with the same offers?
I also took a look at the Uprise Media Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/uprisemedia.ae/ – it’s always a little suspicious when a company has 14k followers, yet their posts have zero likes or engagement. If this social media company doesn’t have success with their own page, how are they going to do a good job with mine??
Same thing with their Instagram- 43k followers and no engagement. That positively screams “We bought all our followers!”
They Offer Money Upfront
Most of the scam offers offer an easy 3 or 4k, but Hashtag Media and Uprise offer $1000 upfront payment with a profit share. It does sound more reasonable.
I asked how the upfront payment works, and this is the response I got:
“If your page is already signed up we will sign a legal contract with you first and as soon as we receive partial access from you we will make you payment in less than 2 hours but if your page is not signed up yet so first we have to make eligible page for sign up which takes 2-3 days and then pay you first rent in any case you’ll be paid before first monetized video on the page.”
The run on sentence and explanation did not give me the greatest confidence. They want that access first!
They Want Editor Access
They ask for Editor access on your page. This is also called “Facebook access with partial control” on the new pages experience. An editor can do almost EVERYTHING. The one thing they can’t do is remove you as admin, which is the main way of stealing your Facebook page. But they don’t need Editor Access to post videos and ads. They just need advertiser access. Why do they want to control my entire site with the ability to change anything they want without my permission?
The most they really need is Task Access. With Editor Access they can access and remove connected accounts like your Instagram. They can reply to your messages. They can post or delete content. They can remove people from your page. This is just too much access! If they are a sketchy company, you’ve pretty much just given them total control to mess with your page you’ve probably put a lot of work into over the years. It’s just not worth the risk!
Better Safe Than Sorry
I asked them a lot of questions, and they did send me a reference, but in the end, I just wasn’t comfortable handing over that kind of control to my page.
If you have worked with them, I would love to hear your experience! I’m happy to update this post confirming they are legit if someone can prove it.
2024 Update:
I was contacted by Matt Hunter, who said he was an investor in the company and that this post was hurting business. He offered to prove to me that the company was legit and sent me a link to several client’s Facebook pages.
I told him it would be suspicious to remove the post, and it would benefit them more to have actual clients leave comments. (You can see Matt’s comment he left in the comments section below)
After looking at the pages, unfortunately I’m still not convinced.
Why does Matt have 1.8 Million followers, yet a handful of likes and comments on his page? That’s the number one sign of a fake following.
And the next client to leave a comment also has a similar questionable Facebook following. Also, both their followers list is blocked so you can’t see who’s following them. This was the case for all the references.
Also, if you look at the Uprise Media UAE website, it’s a lot of text that doesn’t amount to really telling you what they do or how they do it. And most of the links don’t even work! The links at the top and all the links at the bottom. How can you trust a company that can’t even get their website functioning?
So sorry guys, I still feel like there is something just not quite right with this company. There are too many red flags.
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Categories: Mom Blog, scam alert
I too have been contacted and began moving forward until I dug a bit further. The “contract” that I received was very unprofessional and does not have the standard clauses for an agreement like this. The website links do not work. The email exchanges are not professional. Have you discovered anything new?
Thank you for commenting! I have been hoping to hear from others to see if they think it is scammy too. There is just nothing out there about these companies. But too many red flags. I still haven’t heard from anyone that has gone all the way through with them yet.
I have worked with Uprise Media for over 2 years and they are a legitmate company. The CEO’s name is Shahab and the companies headquarters are in Abu Dhabi. I was referred to the company by Valerie Bangs. ( @Valeriebangsgarcia ) You can look me up on Facebook and Instagram I have over 2 million followers collectively between both accounts.
@matthunter123
They do pay influencers monthly, and pay a % of the revenue earned on the pages as well through the In-Stream Ads tool on Facebook.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
Matt is the trying to recruit my page. I am extremely skeptical and believe this is a scam. Usually talent isn’t trying to recruit
Matt sent me a message on Instagram to say he had invested in this company a few years ago and asked me to take the post down because it was hurting business.
I told him it would benefit him more to have actual clients leave comments about their positive experiences, to prove it wasn’t a scam.
He gave me a few client links to contact for references. I’m still not convinced though. I’d be happy to share those with you if you want to check them out yourself.
I still haven’t heard from anyone who is a regular client.
But on the flipside- I haven’t heard from anyone who’s gone through with it and gotten scammed either.
So I feel like I can’t confirm it is a scam, but I am not convinced it’s not.
The business model is for the company to take over the role of administrator to make posts on pages which they can respond to messages and other administrator roles. If you do research on the page, it was only created in October of last year and the references if you look at the post of the page doesn’t match up to the content previous Posted by the owner of the page. I don’t know about you, but my page has almost half a million followers. If you’re OK with somebody posting as you’re page with carte blanche You’re more than welcome to sign up for it without any kind of guarantees or reputation behind it.
I completely agree with you that it is all very questionable- that’s why I created this post.
I got a similar email and I think it’s not worth it. I got a few similar emails over the years, all from different senders, never replied to anyone. So many FB pages hacked, businesses destroyed… The positive comments here sound sketchy too. It’s not a big deal for anyone to ask a few friends – and since they know about this post… That FB page above – I mean what’s that even about?! Clickbait content – and that’s a “client”? All too dodgy. Either way I’d NEVER give access to anyone like that. Even my VA had limited access to my social media channels. Once you do, there’s no turning back. I only trust official BIG social media scheduling tools. I’ve got no proof of anything – just my honest opinion.
Thank you for sharing your opinion! I really appreciate other people chiming in, as this is such an odd one where it’s hard to figure out what’s really going on.
I just received an email from Uprise. They’re trying really hard to look legit. But I did peek at Justice Cook’s FB page above and here’s what I gather. His page is verified so it has “some” legitimacy to it though he still could have bought followers, or run ads to get vanity followers which I’ve done many times (actual people but no value to them and mostly out of the US). I noticed his page is full of clips and reels which are the ones that might be monetized. I’ve seen this tactic on other well known brands. It’s pretty much a bunch of other content creator clips edited into one. If this is their tactic to monetize, it will really mess up your page if you have a legitimate brand and/or engagement. But it might be a real, albeit risky, way to get paid. Just my two cents. I’ll dig deeper and report back.
I think that’s a very good assessment of what’s going on. All the content creator pages they sent me are like that and most of them have hundreds of thousands of followers and very low engagement. So not necessarily a scam, but also risky like you said.
Please do let me know if you find out more!
I was contact my Valerie, just did a zoom call with the other CEO shahid. It seems legit to me because I have worked with other companies who offer the same thing. The only thing that makes me skeptical of course is the fact that they’re located overseas but honestly, they’re the best at what they do! I’m going to give it at shot with my Snapchat, Facebook, and instagram and I’ll report back.
Good luck! Last time I checked all the pages they managed were full of fake likes and followers. If you need to know how to spot that, read this post: https://geekmamas.com/2024/03/15/how-to-tell-someone-bought-followers-and-likes/