Dive Brief:

• Facebook revealed in a blog post Friday that it is making progress in the fight against fraudulent activity, like fake likes, on the site. The company said that over the past six months, it has tripled the number of false likes detected and blocked before they ever reached Pages.
• The social site credits advancements in pattern recognition technologies for its progress in identifying fake likes.
• In March, Facebook introduced a feature to notify brand pages whenever fake likes were blocked. So far, 200,000 brand pages have received notice. 

Dive Insight:

After winning $2 billion in legal judgments against fraudulent users, Facebook has been on a roll in fighting fake likes. Even though the disappearance of fake likes can seem like a big hit to a brand's image, there's no real value in sending out social messages to uninterested or non-existent parties.