Oct 04, 2014 09:30 AM EDT
Facebook Wants $2 Billion from Spammers Who Sell Fake 'Likes'

Facebook is seeking $2 billion from various spammers who have sold fake "likes" and otherwise compromised the social network's content.

The push to stamp out spammers and false likes illustrates how the site has been especially intent on improving its content lately, The Verge said.

"We have obtained nearly $2 billion in legal judgments against spammers, and we utilize these channels when possible to remind would-be offenders that we will fight back to prevent abuse on our platform," the company said in a blog post. "We also limit likes per account to make spammers' operations less efficient."

Facebook fights spammers by constantly updating various systems on the site such as registering, adding friends, liking and messaging. Spam is only worthwhile if it makes money, so part of Facebook's job is making that difficult to do by limiting likes allowed per account and flagging activity that gets unusually high.

The company pointed out that false Facebook likes actually hurt business pages instead of helping since people are far less likely to keep engaging with the page, which will hurt its chances of being noticed by Facebook's algorithm.

"We have a strong incentive to aggressively get rid of fake likes because businesses and people who use our platform want real connections and results, not fakes," said the blog post. "Businesses won't achieve results and could end up doing less business on Facebook if the people they're connected to aren't real. It's in our best interest to make sure that interactions are authentic."

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