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What stops them from making more facebook accounts?

Alex3917 16y ago
Minimum account age, minimum number of friends, need to have your account vetted the first time you post, need to be friends with certain people or within two degrees of certain people, etc. Essentially it's extremely difficult to create a new Facebook persona and have it look at all authentic. Not impossible, but at least 250x more difficult than creating a new GMail account.
kgermino 16y ago
What stops them from making fake Facebook accounts now?
- phlux 16y ago
  Facebook stops people. I have never, nor shall I ever, maintained an account on Facebook. This means that I will forever opt out of commenting on TC articles.
  - spullara 16y ago
    You can use a yahoo account as well which is essentially anonymous.
    - phlux 16y ago
      What year are you in 1998? I let my Yahoo account die over half a decade ago. :)
      - spullara 16y ago
        Takes 5 minutes to make one. Don't even need an email address.
  - jerhewet 16y ago
    This, to the power of infinity. I don't have a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or any other "social networking" account -- and I never will. IM(NSH)O the massive drop in comments on TechCrunch is an indicator of how many people don't have (and don't want) an account on Facebook.
    - rue 16y ago
      I don't see why you should decide to never have a social account. Personally, I don't trust Facebook, so I don't use it. Twitter, on the other hand, I've found useful both to follow people I know or know of in the context of a hobby &c., and as a microblog for myself.
bl4k 16y ago
You effectively outsource spam and troll blocking to Facebook. They allow test profiles (I have around 4) - but they know who you really are. Fake accounts get shut down very quickly, they have a mechanism that seems to detect those accounts very quickly.
- RK 16y ago
  One data point: I've had the same fake account with a laughably fake name for more than 2 years and only one friend.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    There are a number of accounts we created for inanimate objects while at uni which are still around. They all have a certain amount of friends and photos though. We also used to create fake people using photos from stock art libraries and try to create realistic social lives for them, with our aim being that our real friends would eventually start enquiring after the fake people as if they knew them. We were pretty bored.
- redstron 16y ago
  Fake accounts get shut down very quickly I have encountered numerous fake profiles that have survived for months/years. Many of these represent businesses that should really be pages. Others are accounts that are used on hate groups/pages exclusively and have highly offensive fake names. The worst example I've seen was a vicious cyberbullying profile that Facebook allowed to accumulate hundreds of friends, under an obviously fake name, despite a large number of abuse reports.

Minimum account age, minimum number of friends, need to have your account vetted the first time you post, need to be friends with certain people or within two degrees of certain people, etc. Essentially it's extremely difficult to create a new Facebook persona and have it look at all authentic. Not impossible, but at least 250x more difficult than creating a new GMail account.

kgermino 16y ago

What stops them from making fake Facebook accounts now?

phlux 16y ago
Facebook stops people. I have never, nor shall I ever, maintained an account on Facebook. This means that I will forever opt out of commenting on TC articles.
- spullara 16y ago
  You can use a yahoo account as well which is essentially anonymous.
  - phlux 16y ago
    What year are you in 1998? I let my Yahoo account die over half a decade ago. :)
    - spullara 16y ago
      Takes 5 minutes to make one. Don't even need an email address.
- jerhewet 16y ago
  This, to the power of infinity. I don't have a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or any other "social networking" account -- and I never will. IM(NSH)O the massive drop in comments on TechCrunch is an indicator of how many people don't have (and don't want) an account on Facebook.
  - rue 16y ago
    I don't see why you should decide to never have a social account. Personally, I don't trust Facebook, so I don't use it. Twitter, on the other hand, I've found useful both to follow people I know or know of in the context of a hobby &c., and as a microblog for myself.

bl4k 16y ago

You effectively outsource spam and troll blocking to Facebook. They allow test profiles (I have around 4) - but they know who you really are. Fake accounts get shut down very quickly, they have a mechanism that seems to detect those accounts very quickly.

RK 16y ago
One data point: I've had the same fake account with a laughably fake name for more than 2 years and only one friend.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  There are a number of accounts we created for inanimate objects while at uni which are still around. They all have a certain amount of friends and photos though. We also used to create fake people using photos from stock art libraries and try to create realistic social lives for them, with our aim being that our real friends would eventually start enquiring after the fake people as if they knew them. We were pretty bored.
redstron 16y ago
Fake accounts get shut down very quickly I have encountered numerous fake profiles that have survived for months/years. Many of these represent businesses that should really be pages. Others are accounts that are used on hate groups/pages exclusively and have highly offensive fake names. The worst example I've seen was a vicious cyberbullying profile that Facebook allowed to accumulate hundreds of friends, under an obviously fake name, despite a large number of abuse reports.