Officials of Facebook confirmed Monday uncovering over 583,000 “fake FB accounts” that has since been removed, Senate President Tito Sotto said
The Senate leader told reporters Facebook officials based in Asia and the Philippines made the disclosure in the presence of Senator Gregorio Honasan during a courtesy call at his office yesterday.
“They (Facebook officials) reported the fake accounts that they have removed, saying 583,000 have alreeady been removed by Facebook and they are still removing some,” Sotto said.
Senate President Sotto reported that Facebook is also “trying to find out”those who registered under fictitious names.”
He added, however, that the Facebook officials gave no indication they intend to ask Congress to pass remedial legislation to adress the problem of fake accounts.
“As of today, they were just relating what they did about the fictitious FB account,” Sotto said, adding they did not discuss the [possibility of passing a bill to address the issue.”We did not talk about that. They just reported it (discovery of fake FB accounts) to us.”
Sotto said the courtesy call was a followup meeting after he was invited as guest during the ribbon cutting ceremonies for Facebook’s new office at the Bonifacio Global City (BGC).
The Senate leader recalled that “durting that time, I told them that I was expecting Facebook to be family fun, social media and not what is happening, such as beng source of fake news and all sorts of fake accounts…They were very bothered, so they started scrutinizing specially those based in the Philippines.”
Asked if he sees the need for remedial legislation, Sotto replied: “not yet.”
“In the US, they are discussing that because they invited Mark Zuckerberg. They talked about it. But here, they have no recommendation at the moment because they can still hande lit,” the Senate President added, “They can police their ranks and they have already authorized at least a dozen fact checkers.”
Image credits: AP