With constant social media impersonation becoming more and more of an issue, Warith Niallah, Chief Executive Officer of FTC Publications is establishing a task force to tackle what he terms as “Out of control fake accounts and blatant impersonation”. Noting that while social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are diligent about removing them when discovered, the media executive indicates that is “Up to us to tell them, and it’s literally out of control”.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, and even Amazon have verified accounts such as Mr. Niallah’s in order to address the problem, with Instagram holding out for unknown reasons.
Verification helps to some degree, but Warith was noted as saying “Verification is more of a celebrity endorsement than identity verification”, and the process is at best subjective, unclear, and for all practical purposes useless. While clients of FTC Publications endure an average of 2-3 impersonations in a given month, some accounts, especially Instagram have been impersonated over 200 times, including his own.
Warith Niallah’s genuine Instagram account:
“With news, mass media, entertainment, and music coming from our Company in 61 locations around the world, it is important that we take steps to address this problem”, the Executive comments.
The task force will be headquartered in Los Angeles, California and will operate in each of the locations throughout the company. As new fake accounts appear, plans are that the team members will assemble documentation and send over to the social media networks. In some instances, legal action will follow against the impersonators.
This task force will hopefully bring more awareness to identify theft and the fact the social media platforms like Instagram need to step up and become part of the solution.
