Facebook removes inactive account 'likes' from brand pages

In an effort to make audiences more meaningful for social pages and to keep information up-to-date, Facebook has removed memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts.

The social giant’s motive behind the “like purge” is to provide brand pages with more accurate data and insights on users who actively follow their pages. Additionally, Facebook already filters out likes and comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts from individual page posts, so by removing it from pages' like counts, the brand can stay consistent.

Page admins may see a dip in numbers as a result of the update. However, the new numbers represent better page analytics and will show the actual amount of users who are available to interact with a page.

“Removing inactive Facebook accounts from Page audience data gives businesses up-to-date insights on the people who actively follow their Page and makes it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like lookalike audiences,” Facebook wrote in a blog post about the impending like cleanse.