Facebook Confession: Nearly 9 Percent of Our Accounts are Bogus
In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has ever used Facebook or is even slightly familiar with the Internet, there are a lot of liars on the world's most popular social playground. Millions, in fact. According to the company's 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Facebook contains as many as 83 million "false" accounts.
Not all of those are outright fakes, or "undesirable accounts" intended to violate the company's terms of services (like spammers). Facebook also counts "false" accounts as those "where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet." Such accounts are permitted on Facebook, but only when creating them as a Page, not a personal profile. Throw duplicate accounts into the mix and the total percentage of bogus or mis-created accounts rises to 8.7 percent, or more than 83 million users.
That's a lot of accounts running amok on Facebook, disrupting its advertising efforts. Zuckerberg and company claimed the service was home to 955 million monthly active users as of June 30, 2012, but that number drops to around 872 million if you deduct the more than 83 million fake/false ones.
Not all of those are outright fakes, or "undesirable accounts" intended to violate the company's terms of services (like spammers). Facebook also counts "false" accounts as those "where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet." Such accounts are permitted on Facebook, but only when creating them as a Page, not a personal profile. Throw duplicate accounts into the mix and the total percentage of bogus or mis-created accounts rises to 8.7 percent, or more than 83 million users.
That's a lot of accounts running amok on Facebook, disrupting its advertising efforts. Zuckerberg and company claimed the service was home to 955 million monthly active users as of June 30, 2012, but that number drops to around 872 million if you deduct the more than 83 million fake/false ones.
