This barndominium does not exist, part IV
In which a real construction company's Facebook page is hijacked by spammers to post AI-generated images of barndominiums
If you’ve been on Facebook in recent years, you’ve doubtless encountered one or more of the many content farm pages that post endless streams of AI-generated images, frequently referred to as “AI slop”. Many of these pages are hacked accounts that are no longer under the control of their original owners. Often, these hacks result in an abrupt shift in the page’s content, making the account takeover easy to spot.
Popular content farm “Barndominium Gallery” is an example of this phenomenon: this page originally belonged to a hair salon in Oklahoma, but was hijacked in January 2024, at which time it pivoted to posting AI-generated images of improbable houses. The person or persons behind “Barndominium Gallery” have since hijacked other pages to post similar content. One of the recent hacks is less obvious, as the hacked page once belonged to a construction company that builds real homes that resemble the fake houses served up by the spammers who stole it.
Created back in 2012, the original “Baratto Brothers Construction” Facebook page was for many years the official Facebook presence of a Minnesota construction company of the same name. In August 2024, however, the page was hacked, and the new operators began posting AI-generated images of large rural houses. These images are generally accompanied by emoji-laden captions such as “Beautiful Farmhouse With Massive Wraparound Porch 😍🏠🤍” and “This Barndominium is beyond perfection 😍🏠🖤”.
The real Baratto Brothers Construction created a replacement Facebook page not long after, where, in a September 2024 post, they advised their customers of the hack of their former page. This post indicates that the legitimate owners attempted to regain control of the compromised page for over a month, but were ultimately refused by Meta due to “policies”. Despite numerous reports via Facebook’s reporting mechanism, the hijacked page remains online and under control of the hackers over nine months later. (This is also the case with the original “Barndominium Gallery” page, which has yet to be either banned or returned to its rightful owner 16 months after being stolen.)
The posting style of the hacked Baratto Brothers Facebook page is virtually indistinguishable from that of “Barndominium Gallery” and several other content farm pages that constantly post AI-generated images of houses. Almost all posts consist of an image of a nonexistent house, accompanied by an enthusiastic one-sentence caption ending in emoji. The sole tweak to the content posted by the hacked Baratto Brothers page is the addition of a watermark that incorrectly states the name of the company as “Baratto Brother Construction” rather than “Baratto Brothers Construction”.
As mentioned earlier, this is not the only instance where a Facebook page associated with a real business has been taken over by hackers and repurposed to churn out endless AI image slop. In a better online world, Meta would return obviously hacked accounts to their rightful owners, or at the very least ban them to avoid rewarding fraudsters. Unfortunately, Meta instead has seen fit to take no action whatsoever despite numerous reports, and in fact frequently recommends these hacked accounts via Facebook’s recommendation algorithm. It is increasingly difficult to interpret Meta’s inaction on this issue as anything other than tacit endorsement of fraud.