San Francisco: Facebook is on a spree to clean up fake ‘Likes’ that are posted by spammers or black marketers who seek to make some businesses on its social network platform.

“We have recently increased our automated efforts to remove Likes on pages that may have been gained by means that violate our Facebook terms” of service, the Facebook security team said in a blog post on Friday.

“These newly improved automated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users or purchased bulk Likes.”

“A Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a page benefits no one,” Facebook said.

“The cleanup will benefit both users and companies that maintain pages on the network, by giving a more accurate measurement of fan count and demographics”, added Facebook in the post.

Facebook said the number of Likes, or endorsements by users, on corporate pages is likely to drop by less than 1 per cent, on average, after the crackdown.