Social media giant Facebook has announced that it will begin to delete “likes” gained using fake accounts or through other means that violate its terms of service.
Last month, Facebook admitted that around 83 million of its accounts, or 8.7% of its user base, consisted of fake accounts.
In a statement republished by ZDNet, Facebook said:
“We do not and have never permitted the purchase or sale of Facebook Likes as we only want people connecting to the Pages and brands with whom they have chosen to connect.”
“Beyond the need to maintain authentic relationships on Facebook, these third-party vendors often attempt to use malware or other forms of deception to generate fraudulent Likes, which is harmful to all users and the internet as a whole.”
“Improvements to our site integrity systems benefit both users and brands alike. Users will continue to connect to the Pages and Profiles they authentically want to subscribe to, and Pages will have a more accurate measurement of fan count and demographics.”
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
