How Influential Is Facebook?
With over 855 million active users, Facebook is currently one of the most influential social media sites in existence. It’s not just individuals who can use this tool to contact and keep up with friends, but also businesses can now utilize Facebook to promote specific events and overall publicity. However, a growing problem is the increase in fakery on Facebook and on the Internet in general. According to an article in The New York Times, 8.7% of Facebook profiles are fake—that means approximately 83 million users on profile are not who they actually say they are. In general, 4% of content on social media is fake; this number is supposed to grow to 10% by 2014.
Because of mechanisms such as information cascading, fake information on influential social media can have significant effects. When a source of legitimacy or hierarchy spreads certain information, it’s sure to affect the opinions of others. In the case of Gaston Memorial Hospital, a Facebook page that pretended to be them for 11 days publicly criticized Obama. These actions generated a lot of attention and activity, especially in the form of likes, which in a small town like Gastonia, N.C. is particularly influential.
While Facebook’s essence is that it provides a haven for real identities from all over the world, and while it has stated that culling fakery is “pretty much one of the top priorities for the company all the time,” there are some practicalities in allowing leeway for fake information. Since many companies have started looking at social media sites to evaluate prospective employees, many college graduates who are hunting for jobs have changed profile identifiers to pseudo-names. When Colleen Callahan, 25, was searching for a job her senior year of college, she changed her Facebook name to Colleen Skisalot. She was able to retain some anonymity from her potential employers, and the name just stuck. She feels no need to change it. There has to be some divide between a person’s Facebook profile and who they actually are.