9.6% of Facebook's Users 'May Be Fakes' (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: Facebook estimates that about 200 million of its more than 2.07 billion users may be fakes... [Non-paywalled article here.] Colin Stretch, the general counsel of Facebook, told the Senate Intelligence Committee the company was doubling its review staff to 20,000 and using artificial intelligence to find more "bad actors"... Sean Edgett, Twitter's general counsel, testified before Congress that about 5 percent of its 330 million users are "false accounts or spam," which would add up to more than 16 million fakes.

Independent experts say the real numbers are far higher. On Twitter, little more than an email address is needed to start tweeting. Facebook's requirement that users be their authentic selves means the company asks for a smattering of information to sign up -- name, birthday, gender and email address. But few checks exist to verify if that information is true when a user signs up.

Comments

Re:I'm fake multiple times

[whoever57]

Yet- it's already suggested real life friends among the people who 'might' be my friends.

Probably, your friends installed a mobile app, which sucked up all the contacts in their device and then Facebook found your email address amongst those addresses.

Re:2.07 Billion?

[Kjella]

There are roughly 7.6 billion people on the planet, and about 1/4 of them use facebook? I'm guessing there are well north of 200 million fakes.

You don't understand the reach of Facebook. Here in Norway 80% of the population has used Facebook in the last three months and 65% use it daily. In the youth category (16-24) about 90% use it daily. Granted, we're only 5.2 million of the world population but "everyone" is on Facebook. These are quite reliable statistics not made by Facebook. Getting a Facebook account is the current decade's version of getting a GeoCities homepage, "everyone" has one. I'm quite willing to believe Facebook's numbers are accurate. I don't want the to be, but the facts quite clearly reject my wishes.