Facebook Files Lawsuit Against Fake Account Resellers in China

• Facebook is trying to crack down on fake accounts by taking action against fake account resellers.
• A lawsuit has been filed in the US against multiple individuals from China who were involved in selling accounts, followers and likes.
• The social media giant will enforce its rights under US intellectual property law to prevent further policy violations.

Four companies and three individuals from the People’s Republic of China are facing a lawsuit filed by Facebook for selling fake accounts. The defendants allegedly sold Facebook accounts, likes, and followers to paying customers. The social media platform released an official statement to detail the incident and stated that the defendants also sold Twitter, Instagram, Google, Apple, and Amazon accounts.

The defendants have legitimate businesses including software, hardware, and online advertising. However, they also sell accounts while breaking a number of usage policies set by social media platforms. According to Facebook, the sold accounts are often used for spam, marketing scams, phishing, and advertising fraud. There have been a large number of fake news campaigns driven by such accounts and preventing their sales can help curb misinformation.

Facebook has been actively banning fake accounts in recent times with over two billion fake accounts being removed from the platform between January 2018 to September 2018. However, the platform’s efforts are not enough to eradicate the fake accounts completely. With millions of accounts being created every day, AI tools cannot offer 100% results currently. Facebook is working towards stopping this kind of behavior completely and taking legal action against account resellers can curb the issue at the source.

Misinformation campaigns have disrupted elections in the past, and Facebook is taking great strides to prevent such incidents from reoccurring. The social media platform has taken measures to keep fake accounts away and also introduced new tools to make political ads more transparent. Users can now see the identity of advertisers behind political campaigns which reduces the chances of propaganda ads being effective at misinforming people on the platform.

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