There are so many ways in which I'd like to contradict this article, but I'll stick to just one.
> While they reveal a problem escalating at an alarming rate and are constantly being revised upward .. in Q2 2017
In Q4 2017 the method for measuring the prevalence of fake accounts was changed to something more accurate. The number of fake accounts wasn't "escalating at an alarming rate", it was comparable to the number in the previous quarter.
Source: I worked on that change.