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Facebook Estimates Around 10% of Accounts Are Fake
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, during its fourth-quarter earnings report, Facebook revealed it had 1.23 billion monthly active users, 757 million daily active users, 945 million monthly active mobile users, and 556 million daily active mobile users. In its 10-K filing published on the weekend, the company estimated that in 2013, between 5.5 percent and 11.2 percent of these users were fake."
Another anonymous reader sent in a link to a recent interview where Mark Zuckerberg appears more pragmatic in his opinions about forcing real identities online: "Former Facebook employees say identity and anonymity have always been topics of heated debate in the company. Now Zuckerberg seems eager to relax his old orthodoxies. 'I don’t know if the balance has swung too far, but I definitely think we’re at the point where we don’t need to keep on only doing real identity things,' he says. 'If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.'"
At this point, they will get to your name in any case. They have accumulated such a massive data base that they will identify you in a number of other ways. Your real name will eventually leak to them through your friends or because they match it with your name.surname@gmail.com address, or mining your company's staff page, or because you pay something with your credit card, etc... Plus a ton of other things.
Just because you don't have your real name there it does not mean they don't know who you are. It might help gainst other parties data mining/stalking you, though.
Yeah sometimes its necessary. A friend of mine has been stalked by a Neo Nazi gang for some time after she spoke out somewhere about racism. Death threats, and so on (Neo nazis are one of the nastiest organized crime things I've ever seen!). She has *very good* reason to want to be anonymous and use a fake name on facebook only known to family and close friends.
Its *dangerous* to force real identities on people.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
What's a fake account? I have a regular one, for everyone, then I have one for competitions and the like, where you have to `like` something to enter. Clearly I'm not going to do this on my normal account because it'll spam all my contacts and I'll look like a twat. What do they expect you to do? But it's not "fake" - it's got my name on it (sort of). I do the same for Twitter, but I don't recall having to pretend that my second (or my first, come to that) Twitter account was "mine".
If I put up a Facebook page for my cat, is that considered a fake account? No fake identities have been used, though perhaps the T&S require all users to be human.
What about people who have two FB profiles - eg one filled with gaming apps and all the crap that comes along with it, and the other for socialising?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Does this mean that 10% of my friends aren't really my friends?
A lot of so-called "fake" accounts were created because FB is way too pervy, wanting to know enough information about you that they can sell it to content aggregators.
So one creates "fake" accounts with no real phone number attached and a generic image to stop FB from being too NSA.
Maybe they should back off. Everyone is leaving fast because their perv-quotient is way too high.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would never trust a "testing" account 100% and there is always more than one way for something to break
so you're never going to eliminate fake testing accounts. That being said I doubt developers make up a
large percentage of the "fake" accounts and I bet there are more "duplicate" accounts than fake accounts
though. It seems like alot of kids create multiple accounts, abandon old accounts and create new ones,
etc...
If Zuckerberg is publically acknowledging 10% then you can be sure it's a lot higher than that. I'd peg it at closer to 25%. But that's not the real issue. The real issue is that, due to FB's policies, legitimate users feel compelled to put in fake names, birthdates, locations, schools, employers, etc. Why? Because of FB's continued and well documented history of deceptive security practices. You cannot trust them and it's one of the main reasons I don't use facebook.
In short, the users don't want to give up their accounts entirely (although I'm sure many have) but remain there with a fake identity. So the question then becomes: for a company like FB where almost 100% of their revenue comes from advertising how effective is it when you are advertising to zombie accounts?
"between 5.5 percent and 11.2 percent of these users were fake."
I assume they are just counting the entire Los Angeles population right? ;-)
What's a fake account?
Given their terms of service your testing account is almost certainly fake. If you only look at it to "like" stuff that you don't even care enough about to do so publicly, its fake, (as is your "like").
I only know a few people with facebook accounts who don't have a second so-called "testing" account, plus a couple accounts they started and then abandoned.
So I'm thinking the 50% number is closer to the mark than the 10%
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Certainly 50% of mine are fake.
And the other one is slightly exaggerated too.
They'll use 11.2% when valuating their user base to dodge as much tax as possible and 5.5% to push up the price they charge advertisers.
I'm a 104 year old man born in Antarctica currently residing in the North Sentinel Islands. I graduated from Columbine High School at the age of 1 and went to Miskatonic University in Arkham Massachusetts.
Facebook counts the profiles of persons no longer on the planet, people that have created a page and not been there since, and people that have tried to "quit" their site for as long as I can remember. When people want something to look a certain way, they hire statisticians to make it look that way.
There was a report last year that Facebook had 1.2 billion people signed on, which is laughable. The largest populations in the world (India and China) do not have a majority that can use the internet, hundreds of millions in other countries are banned from this (most of Africa and the Middle East), and other people just don't give a shit (majority of Eastern Europe).
I'm pretty sure another report near the same time claimed that 50% of the accounts on FB were not people at all. Some of that 50% were companies, and a big chunk went to sock puppets, trolls, and scams.
I'm guessing that is why FB decided to try and make themselves look "good", but people are still going to leave. If you are not a security minded old codger like me, FB is no longer "hip" and "cool".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
> If you only look at it to "like" stuff that you don't even care enough about to do so publicly, its fake, (as is your "like").
It's a "like" that was unabashedly purchased from a user, how real could it possibly be?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
(Posted anonymously to protect my male identity.)
I'm a transgendered individual, and I maintain my original Facebook profile in my real name, and a separate Facebook profile in my femme name. The two profiles are not connected. I use neither of them for troll or spam purposes, but merely to reflect the two different halves of "me," and I don't consider either one to be "fake." I've little doubt, however, that Facebook would think of my femme profile as "fake," though it's backed with real friends, real photos, and mostly-valid personal data that I've entered, albeit with a gender of "female."
If Facebook is really considering relaxing being so fussy about "real identities," it can only help me and others like me.
One about "me", and one that "Like"s crap in order to get other crap for free,
There are probably reasons to have others but I don't think I care enough.
Other than someone involved with marketing/sales or social media/web related, what job requires a FB account?
One with an employer whose HR department decided that Facebook abstainers are suspicious. Or in a small business where everybody has to pitch in on the social marketing.
I don't trust any site - for the most part - that asks for DOB, locations, schools, employers,et cetera. Why? Because they don't need to know
Onilne job applications ask for location, experience, and education. But I guess they're an example of a site outside "the most part" because HR does in fact "need to know" who is most likely to have the skills to be useful in the position and least likely to need a signing bonus to cover relocation.
If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.
Exactly. That's why I post here so often as Anonymous Coward.
My wife's account with her real name closed arbitrarily by facebook together with her somewhat popular pages and groups. Reason: fake account. She scanned and sent her id and everything. Only response from facebook says this decision is final and cannot be reversed. So I am saying, fuck your policies Mark.
And who really cares? It may be 10% of the accounts that are obviously fake, then there are probably a huge number of accounts that are "fake" in the way that the person behind it don't want to reveal the real identity for one reason or another but holds a low profile.
Facebook is a pool for exhibitionists.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Forcing people to use their real names online in a publicly accessible way is a terrible idea and will scupper your company. Facebook knows this because Google+ was/is arguably a better product, and was taking off fast, until Google started trying to force real names. Overnight, anyone with any kind of privacy concerns stopped using it and, despite Google still trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to ram Google+ down our throats any way it can, it's not really taking off.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Aside from that, some people enjoy anonymity simply by virtue of having a common name. I bet there are millions of real John Smiths who can hide in plain sight simply by virtue of their name. Yet someone with the unfortunate name Ammonia Bumblebee would be instantly and uniquely identifiable.
Anyway, I notice Facebook are pushing real identities more and some sites are requiring users sign on with a "verified" real account. But their manner of authentication is incredibly weak - provide a mobile telephone number. It is trivial to obtain a sim in many countries. e.g. in the UK every Poundland sells SIMs at the counter. Throw it into an old phone, use it to register on Facebook as "real", wait for the authentication code, and away you go. Pretty stupid really.