Radio stations are fighting with fake profiles on the internet for their brands and moderators.
A spokesman for the Association of Private Media (Vaunet) told the German Press Agency: “According to Vaunet information, fake profiles of radio station brands and/or their moderators have been circulating on Facebook for weeks.” He added: “The station brands are practically affected by this of all major German private broadcasters".
Media regulators who oversee commercial broadcasting know the problem.
The Bavarian State Center for New Media (BLM) said: “The dissemination of information about fake accounts, i.e. the deliberate deception about identity, has long been part of our digital everyday life.” Social bots are also used, i.e. computer programs that operate largely automatically.
“Radio stations are also affected – but the state media authorities have no figures on how many there are.”
The Antenne Bayern Group, which operates several radio stations, speaks of numerous cases on Facebook and complains that these are not being deleted from the platform quickly enough.
Therefore, legal avenues have already been taken.
Managing Director Felix Kovac said: "In the last quarter there were soon 20 fake profiles from moderators and a newsreader from Antenne Bayern and Rock Antenne." According to the company, individual listeners have already fallen for the scam of fake profiles.
Fraudsters tried to steal account data.
A spokeswoman for the Meta group, which operates Facebook, said on the subject of fake profiles: "Fake accounts violate our community standards and we remove them when we discover them." to inform accounts.
The media regulators of the BLM see different motivations behind fake profiles: “Whoever is behind fake profiles depends above all on the motivation: fake accounts serve the purpose of concealing the true identity in order to influence discussions and the formation of opinions – often with disinformation Content, some of which is also distributed from abroad.” But they also refer to this: “The artificial increase in reach can also serve economic purposes, for example to give products a more positive image.
Sometimes a fake profile is also used to deliberately spy out data, sometimes with a criminal background.”