There’s been a lot of buzz about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, and now it appears that a number of fakes have made its way onto the social media giant.
The Washington Post reports that around a dozen fake accounts, pages, and groups (some with hundreds of followers) were found on Facebook and Instagram recently—including ones that led people to third-party websites.
The discovery of the fake Libra accounts and pages comes just a week after members of both the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee grilled David Marcus, the head of Calibra, the wallet for Libra, about the plans to launch the cryptocurrency in 2020.
During the hearings, a number of lawmakers said they did not trust Facebook as it ventures into money, a feeling that was echoed by Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, who spoke with the Post.
“There is a deep irony here in Facebook being used as the platform that could undermine trust in the currency Facebook is trying to build trust in,” Prasad told the newspaper. “Facebook has an enormous worldwide network and enormous financial muscle… But the only way Libra will work well as a medium of exchange is if everyone can trust it. And that’s the big question right now: whether there is going to be enough trust in Facebook.”
Fake Libra accounts were also found on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms, according to the report.
You can read all of the Washington Post report here.
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