Nearly a decade after a movie and MTV show began spotlighting cases of catfishing to a mostly unaware public, a debate over the practice of creating fake personas online is playing out between law enforcement in Los Angeles and the world’s largest social media company.
Following a September report from the Brennan Center for Justice that found Los Angeles Police Department officers extensively surveil social media with little oversight or internal monitoring and build fake profiles of people, Meta Platforms Inc.’s vice president and deputy general counsel for civil rights wrote in a letter to the LAPD’s chief that the practice violates the company’s terms of service and should be halted immediately.
While it does not constitute catfishing in the truest sense of the word, it contains elements of the practice in a bid for the LAPD to advance its criminal surveillance efforts.
Meta’s objection to the use of fake profiles and catfishing, where users are tricked by fake accounts into online relationships and sometimes scammed out of money, is a stance that the public seems inclined to support: A new Morning Consult poll found that nearly 4 in 5 U.S. adults back social media companies to ban fake accounts, while a nearly identical share is in favor of regulators creating laws to prevent impersonation or fake accounts on social media.
