Facebook said that by filing the lawsuit, it's hoping to "reinforce that this kind of fraudulent activity is not tolerated." The company explained how fake accounts can be used for spam and phishing, marketing scams, advertising fraud and other nefarious schemes. In recent years, they're more associated with misinformation campaigns, used to disseminate false news and sow discord on the platform.

To address the issue, Facebook said in its complaint that it used artificial intelligence to disable 2.1 billion inauthentic profiles from January to September 2018. However, fake accounts will continue popping up en masse as long as there are entities selling them in bulk. Facebook's lawsuit is now asking the court to prevent the defendants from creating and promoting the sale of inauthentic accounts, likes and followers, from infringing its trademarks on their websites and from using Facebook-branded domains for those websites.