Just How Many Fake Accounts Are There on Facebook Anyway?

Ad Age "Media Guy" columnist Simon Dumenco's media roundup for the morning of Friday, April 14: Today we've got death, war and branding (see Nos. 1 and 2), a social media copycat (No. 3), real cats (No. 6), fake news (Nos. 4 and 5) and ... Trump-related trolling (No. 7). In other words, pretty much a normal day. Anyway, let's get started ... 1. Media darling of the moment: MOAB. NEW VIDEO shows the moment the 'Mother of all Bombs' was dropped in Afghanistan, killing 36 ISIS militants. https://t.co/auxopCW1TP pic.twitter.com/p103NiNyg1 2. While we wait for Us Weekly to run one of its "25 Things You Don't Know About Me" pieces about MOAB, we have this: 5 things to know about MOAB, the 21,000-pound bomb the US dropped in Afghanistan: https://t.co/UockZMM7pe pic.twitter.com/Jno9w4lFEs 3. "Instagram's Snapchat clone is now more popular than the real thing," per BGR.com. 4. "Facebook is taking aim at fake news, and part of that hunt is snuffing out fake user accounts," CNET's Steven Musil reports. "The company said Thursday it is rolling out changes to its systems to make it more difficult to create sham accounts that promote fake news. The aim is to recognize patterns of activity, such as repeated posting of the same content or an increase in messages sent." Wait, so how many fake accounts are we talking about here? Good question to which we don't have a global answer, but "Facebook said the changes allowed it to identify and eliminate more than 30,000 fake accounts in France" alone. 5. Speaking of Facebook fakery, "This Survey Shows Americans Can't Agree On What Exactly 'News' Is On Facebook," per BuzzFeed News and Ipsos Public Affairs, which "also found that 54% of American adults trust news they see on Facebook 'only a little' or 'not at all.'" 6. On NYmag.com's homepage this morning: "The Editor Who Gets Clicks Wth Cute Animals" -- which links to a post with the longer, arguably less clickworthy headline "The Viral-Media Editor Who Says Cute Babies and Animals Are Her 'Bread and Butter.'" Anyway, I clicked, OK? I clicked, damn it. 7. And finally, This space group trolled Donald Trump from 90,000 feet above Earth https://t.co/xjzua6nbkL Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Just How Many Fake Accounts Are There on Facebook Anyway?

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