Remember that one time you ‘liked’ that brand on Facebook to enter a competition to win an iPad or whatever? Yeah well now they’re using you as a salesperson.

More and more sponsored posts are appearing in the Facebook feed, which, considering their 40% drop in share value since Feb ’12, is to be expected really. But recently, in an icky twist, they’re headlining them with “Your Mate Likes” and hijacking the immediacy of posts to trick you into thinking that they’ve just liked the brand, or weirder, keep banging on about it.

It’s bad for the user because not only is your feed getting clogged up with sponsored content, the line separating it from your friends is being surreptitiously blurred. And the default sort mode of ‘top stories’ is really coming into its own here: if I do nothing, the first thing on my feed each day is a branded post. It’s also bad for the person who liked the brand, because one clicky decision they made (probably in a moment of indifference, as opposed to conviction) has resulted in a permanent relationship. A bit of volunteer work if you will.

Ironically, the brands you might not mind advertising – perhaps a great magazine deserving of attention – probably don’t have the finances (or, here’s hoping, the gall) to use sponsored content like this.

It would be interesting to do an experiment to see, if you un-like a brand, how long it takes to filter through and stop your association with their paid-for content. But in the meantime you should consider whether you really really like Barclays, or Marks & Spencer, or ASOS, because your little mini-me is out there selling them on your behalf.