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Facebook reported fake numbers to advertisers

(news.yahoo.com)
618 points elorant | 1 comments | 19 Feb 21 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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FatalLogic ◴[19 Feb 21 15:12 UTC] No.26193998[source]▶
In addition to the obvious conflict of interest in relations with advertisers which is the focus of this story, this also implies it would be in Facebook's interests to go easy on fake accounts and tolerate their existence. That's troubling, and just in itself it appears contrary to their public facing policy
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elorant ◴[19 Feb 21 17:28 UTC] No.26195463[source]▶
I have a few fake accounts on FB, and my theory is that they allow them as long as the engagement is high, aka having tons of "friends" and likes/posts.
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1. notahacker ◴[19 Feb 21 19:49 UTC] No.26197238[source]▶
My experience is that they don't care at all. Had a couple of friendspam requests from profiles that made no attempt to look like a real person, but were simply a pouting photo and am invitation to follow a URL to an "adult dating" website with a sketchy looking URL. Reported them both and Facebook sent a polite generic message advising they had passed a review but I could prevent them from attempting to contact me in future if I wanted to.