Facebook this year disabled 583 million accounts in Q1, this is down from 694 million accounts in Q4 of last year, a decrease the company attributes to its “variability of our detection technology’s ability to find and flag them.”
And as it turns out, when it comes to fighting the fake, there’s a lot to contend with. And Zambia has seen it fit to take the battle to the online, as it has instructed the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) to write to Facebook, asking the closer of down 589 fake pages impersonating the President Lungu and government ministers. Of the 589 account, 155 are of Edgar Lungu.
According to Chief Government Spokesperson Dora Siliya, the Zambia Information and Communications Technology has been directed to write to Facebook to close down the accounts and urged citizens to be careful on how they use social media as fraudsters have invaded the social media space.
Facebook still estimates that between 3 and 4 percent of Facebook accounts are not real. That means that with 2.2 billion users, around 66 million of those accounts are fake.