Fakery is all over the Internet, but it is a particular problem for Facebook because it calls into question the social network's basic premise, Somini Sengupta reports in The New York Times.
Twitter, which allows pseudonyms, is rife with fake followers, and the service has been used to spread false information, as it was during Hurricane Sandy. False reviews are a constant problem on consumer Web sites.
But Facebook has sought to distinguish itself as a place for real identity on the Web. As the company tells its users: “Facebook is a community where people use their real identities.†It goes on to advise: “The name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, student ID, etc.â€
Fraudulent “likes†damage the trust of advertisers, who want clicks from real people they can sell to and whom Facebook now relies on to make money. Fakery also can ruin the credibility of search results for the social search engine that Facebook says it is building.
Facebook says it has always taken the problem seriously, and recently stepped up efforts to cull fakes from the site. “It's pretty much one of the top priorities for the company all the time,†said Joe Sullivan, who is in charge of security at Facebook. But Mr. Sullivan declined to say what portion of the company's user base, now in excess of one billion, was false, duplicate or undesirable.
The company quantified the problem last June, in responding to an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the process of going public. At that time, the company said that of its 855 million active users, 8.7 percent, or 83 million, were duplicates, false or “undesirable,†for instance, because they spread spam.
Mr. Sullivan said that since August, the company had put in place a new automated system to purge fake “likes.†The company said it has 150 to 300 staff members who use machine learning and human skills to w eed out fraud.
