Facebook Faces Up to Fake Profiles
After the 2018 Presidential election misinformation abuse on Facebook there was speculation among my social advertising clients that the Facebook audience numbers were not accurate. Many brands that are clients of my firm, The Relevancy Group pulled their ads and refused to utilize their audience match solutions. Now it seems Facebook has admitted to billions of fake profiles on their platform, stating that they have removed 3.2billion fake profiles, which seem to be connected to child abuse posts.The child abuse component of this announcement further underscores the toxic nature of the Facebook platform. As I have written previously, the audience is declining and they are increasing less relevant as an audience reach vehicle. As I predicted, the company in its present form will not exist in ten years and that they would be solely focused on AR/VR. That shift and name change to Meta occurred faster than I had expected. This fake account announcement will further hurt their reputation with advertisers and no doubt capture the attention of regulations as ad rates are calculated on audience size and reach. Fakebook is a more apt name change.