Here’s What Facebook Has to Say About Reports of Fake Profiles

Facebook has released a statement on the numerous fake accounts that appear to have taken over the world’s biggest social network platform on Sunday (June 7). 

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Facebook users in the country reported discovering duplicate profiles on the platform. Some users said the mirror profiles had the same name but with blank profile photos, while some reported the fake profiles lifted photos directly from the original profiles.

“We understand the concerns raised by our community in the Philippines,” a Facebook company spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Esquire Philippines. “We're investigating reports of suspicious activity on our platform and taking action on any accounts that we find to be in violation of our policies. We encourage people to continue reporting any accounts they believe may be inauthentic.”

Facebook said it was “investigating reports of inauthentic accounts on Facebook in the Philippines." 

“We are working to validate the authenticity of these accounts, and where they fail our authenticity checks, the accounts will be removed,” the statement added.

“We encourage people to report any accounts they believe may be inauthentic via our easy-to-use reporting tools.”

According to the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media platform, the company has invested millions of dollars and has deployed sophisticated technology to proactively identify and remove fake accounts from Facebook.

“We estimate that just five percent of our worldwide monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook are fake accounts,” it said.

According to Statista, Facebook had over 2.6 billion active users worldwide as of the first quarter of 2020.

In its statement, Facebook added that, as was outlined in its latest Community Standards Enforcement Report released in May, the company removed 1.7 billion fake accounts from its platform globally in the first quarter of this year.

“Thanks to the use of sophisticated technology, we were able to proactively identify 99.7 percent of these accounts before anyone reported them to us," the statement said. 

“It’s important to note that these metrics don't include attempts to create fake accounts that we block at the time of account creation—which number in the millions."