Facebook has always had a major issue with fake accounts. These spammy profiles are created to impersonate other users, sell phony products, scam people and more. And according to Facebook’s own numbers and a recent report in the Financial Times, the problem is getting worse.

For its part, Facebook claims to have about 2.45 billion monthly active users. However, it also says that about 11 percent of those users are duplicate accounts, while an additional five percent are downright fake. And the Financial Times discovered just how easy it is to create these phony accounts, purchasing 50 of them for just $25. As the social media giant continues to grow, it’s only becoming more difficult to identify and remove these fakes.
“It is adversarial,” Alex Schultz, Facebook’s vice president of growth, told Financial Times. “As we lock down one area, spammers come in and they will attack another area. And so we take on the new attacks.”

“It’s a truism that a company can always do more,” he continued. “But we have changed a lot since 2016… I’m proud of the progress we’ve made.”

While Facebook’s leadership may be proud of their progress, it’s abundantly clear that the company still has a ton of work to do on this issue.

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