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Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

One reason is so somebody who isn’t you can’t (as easily) set up an account pretending to be you for scammy, misinformation, or propaganda purposes.

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My mom probably has 5 imitator accounts (using her picture and name) and I have two (despite only getting on Facebook once or twice a year). Asking Facebook to delete them does not result in them being deleted.

(They don’t seem to do anything beyond gather some followers from her… maybe they’re DMing those followers through)

Don’t they have safeguards against duplicate genuine accounts? How are folks making duplicate malicious ones?

I have no idea… the accounts are obviously dupes… my mom is very active and they are not… I still get messages back from Facebook saying they’ve investigated and decided they are legit accounts.

(I have the same experience with my dupes, except I’m not active, though I am more active than my dupes)

Facebooks AI policing of content is a failure. when I report totally unhinged blatant Nazi content, the response a few days later is always "we didn't find a violation, we realize this is disappointing."

I’m not surprised by that. I am surprised by failure to police accounts. I was under the impression you needed photo ID these days to get an account.

Their safeguards are all over the place. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

I once tried to create a new account with my real name in order to maintain Facebook Business Manager without using my private account. The new account was immediately locked until I added a phone number. I added my business number, which was immediately rejected. I added my personal number which immediately resulted in my private account being locked instead.

So I gave up and don’t use Facebook for my business.

I have an alternate profile that’s also under my real name which is 10+ years old, previously used to keep a distinction between friends and family, and it works just fine.

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