"Cat-fishing" Should Be Regulated

Personally, I find that "Cat-fishing" should be regulated by websites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. When someone "catfishes" they are technically impersonating someone in one way or another, which is against the law. In the documentary "Catfish," Angela Wesselman-Pierce stole the pictures of models and other folks on Facebook and created her own fake online family. Although she didn't try to steal any important information from Nev Schulman, a person who had the intent of doing harm could make a fake identity and work their way into someone's life until they get access to personal information. 

In the documentary "Catfish," Nev Schulman gets into an online relationship with Angela Wesselman who was pretending to be a daughter of hers. She would send covers of songs to Nev and say she sang them, although she never did at all. She was able to make multiple fake accounts posing as family members in order to persuade people into thinking her online persona was real; and what kind of resistance did she encounter? None. There was nothing on Facebook that stopped her from using the stolen photos or from making multiple fake photos. Technically, by using the photos of other people she is stealing their identities and posing as them. This should be more than enough incentive for these social media websites to make barriers on the amount of accounts and the type of accounts that are made. One way to reduce fake accounts is to ask for a license plate number or a valid home address that will only be seen by key staff of the social media service. This practice would help validate the person's photograph and account details on that service. If some detail is wrong or if the same details of one account is seen on another, then an investigation would be conducted to see if there is an impersonating account trying to be made. This would reduce the amount of confusion between accounts that try to mimic the accounts of major organizations, and it would help reduce the number of scammers on the social media service.  

In the end, there needs to be some type of regulation on social media in order reduce the amount of people "Cat-fishing." Social websites and apps need to use real life verification like license plate numbers, Identification Cards, home addresses in order to see if there are any similarities between the account being made and an account that is already made. This will help reduce scammers like Angela Wesselman from stealing people's photos and making multiple fake accounts.