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Laura Brannen's avatar

Mark never really cared much but since he decided to join the alt-right fold to conveniently shrug off any accountability I get the feeling he's getting a cut of the profit from these scam accounts. And like you said, they have the resources to stop this.

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Cathy Ronan's avatar

But poor Mark needs the money. You have to feel bad for the guy.

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Arlene Santaniello's avatar

I got a friend request from fake Miley🙄 Denied!😑

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Free Radical's avatar

The handsome British army general hit me up on Bluesky. Townshend

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STLFrances's avatar

Disgusting. I dumped the Zuckerberg apps back in 2018 and haven’t missed them. I wish more people would do the same

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Glennz2013's avatar

I'm so grateful to have never joined Fuckerbergs Facebook or anything in the Metaverse. The guy is a thief and monetized coward.

If Madame DeFarge was around she'd knit his name into a blanket (a Dicken's reference).

And yes, I know the use of "Fuckerberg" is sophomoric!

Come on giant astroid and hurry!

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Beth Captiva's avatar

I had a person claiming to be fighting in Ukraine, chatting and thanking for support on line on Bluesky but as soon as he asked to chat using WhatsApp and said I do no meta!!! Not another reply .....beware!!!!

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Dina's avatar

Yeah, they're all over Blue Sky. I might get 4-5 notifications a day of a new follower who is either US military (with numbers in their names, of course) or Ukrainian military. If anyone decides to do a "cold call" message, I ignore or block. I recently looked at my chats and it turns out 90 percent of them are now "account deleted."

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Amanda Pahl's avatar

Facebook /meta CENSORSHIP on political pages is rife - they are deleting posts, unfollowing, suspending accounts, changing links, imposing timeouts for posting multiple copies, restricting accounts, blocking group posts, commenting and sharing, blocking likes, blocking group joins, delaying notifications to delay conversations particularly internationally

I even had to undergo a facial recognition photo before I could get my account back - im 60 yo grandma from Australia ffs

Diversify onto other platforms for when it goes down or becomes too restrictive

There is a whole new story here about Zuckerberg intentionally controlling speech ‼️‼️‼️

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Liz Wallis's avatar

Facebook admins deal with this every single day. We've become experts at picking out the fake, scam, seriously obviously stupid profiles and keeping them out of our groups. At the same time, FB's algorithms are so inept at identifying spam that we have to pick alleged spam posts out of the spam folder every day and give our approval, and sometimes all that happens is that the post goes right back in the spam folder. I doubt that the bots are going to be any better at identifying fake profiles. It's not that FB can't do any better, but when you turn everything over to AI, you're going to get AI-level results. AI is great at compiling and analyzing vast amounts of data. It's not so good at dealing with humans. For that, you need other humans.

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Karen McMahon's avatar

Soooooo many of these fake profiles on Facebook.

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Chris David's avatar

There is life after Meta, and it's very good.

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Maggie Frost's avatar

This is the kind of fakers that show up in comments threads saying to female commentators “I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful you are. I’ve sent you a private message to see if you’d be friends with me but you haven’t replied back. Please let me know if you could brighten my day and allow me to be part of your world“. It’s beyond creepy. I always report them and block them but I never hear back that anything was done.

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Maggie Frost's avatar

These are the kind of fakers that show up in comments threads saying to female commentators “I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful you are. I’ve sent you a private message to see if you’d be friends with me but you haven’t replied back. Please let me know if you could brighten my day and allow me to be part of your world“. It’s beyond creepy. I always report them and block them but I never hear back that anything was done.

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Diana S.'s avatar

Every few months I get a message, virtually the same message, different person. It always struck me as odd that the photo seemed to be of someone in the armed forces. Now I know what is behind this. Thanks for the article.

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Robert Karl Muenchausen's avatar

Well, after blocking between 600+ and 800+ accts, most of which appear to be "sock accts" for individuals of some specifc name, often with phony profiles and pilfered from Google or whatever - or none at all! I will block "Daryll Handibank" (not a common name I would think) only to discover there might almost 100 accounts in that name. There's the one I am currently trying to block and no way figure out how many are "his" or legit. So I block them all. A PITA when FB could help (as IG does) by blocking the others setup by this "person". They should have the info to do so, I would think. Or, as in a recent skirmish, I go to block an obviously phony Elon Raines Musk fake acct, doing the same tedious process only to discover that as I use FB's blocking process, something somewhere is aware of what my strategy is and generates even more until I simply say to hell with it after8 pages of 10 each. What the hell is that shit?

FB playing fast and loose with the algoritms? Well, somebody. What I have endured with FB has led me to wonder how much of "hacker" malware shit is actually resident in their system, and/or generated by bored employees just trying to have some fun? That, in turn, along with what we have seen with DOGE Bros, really makes platform security suspect. Does Meta even bother to vette their people, have background checks, or other disqualifying policies?

I check among my friends and many have had similar experiences or worse. Hijacked accounts, and worse.

I appreciate articles like this and in other respected sources, because I and those around me can say, uh, yeah this is the shit we have put up with while Meta seems to be on AI auto pilot. I agree Meta needs to return to work and clean up their cesspool.

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Viktoria S's avatar

When I started seeing these "friend" requests, I complained to FB, naively thinking they might take it seriously. But no, not one of these accounts was removed. Now the routine is: find the FB page, block them, and move on with my life. It is the only way. Maybe if enough people do it, the scammers will look elsewhere, but I don't have high hopes for that. For vulnerable lonely people, the scammers fill a void with language that has been honed to hit the weak spots. I know of someone who was taken to the tune of 6 figures. When one is lonely and vulnerable, the glaring red flags are muted.

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Dan Swan's avatar

Please….everyone…..stop supporting Facebook. Delete your account immediately and stop supporting this site. We have the power to make a difference right now, and you will seriously and negatively affect this billionaire who has been pushing false information to manipulate millions of people.

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Haliborn's avatar

Wipe out suckabird! He’s fascist trash

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King' R's avatar

Republicans are to blame for all this mess. "FACEBOOK ISN’T JUST ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL — IT’S PROFITING FROM THE CRASH."

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