• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 27, 2012

Facebook business Pages are losing tens of thousands of fans, this week -- but not due a user exodus or a marked shift in tastes. Rather, the social network is in the process of removing fake accounts and Page Likes as part of a larger effort to improve site integrity.

“Illegitimately created accounts are being deleted, and Likes gained from malware, compromised accounts, or deceived users are being removed,” TechCrunch reports.

“Wednesday's purge comes nearly a month after Facebook announced plans to crack down on zombie accounts and likes, as part of an effort to guarantee authenticity across the site,” The Verge writes.

“The move follows the social network's admission that 8.7% of its users are not ‘real,’ many having been set up by spammers who use them to artificially make pages appear more popular,” writes BBC News. “The issue poses a problem for Facebook as it seeks to expand its targeted advertising service.”

“In the end, this eradication should come as good news to most users because it means less spam and phishing on the social network,” according to CNet.

“It's not clear quite how many accounts have been wiped out, but plenty of pages have seen massive drops in their fan numbers over the last two days,” Gizmodo reports.

“This update to their security systems will go far to improve integrity,” WebProNews suggests. “But getting rid of the fake likes is treating the symptom. The problem remains that it’s incredibly easy to create a fake account on Facebook … and inflate a page’s like total.”