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Facebook admits millions of accounts are fake (83 million)
MyFoxNY ^ | Aug 2, 2012 | Staff

Posted on 08/02/2012 11:05:08 AM PDT by library user

Facebook's share price dipped below $20 on Thursday after reporting slowing growth and an admission of an alarming number of fake accounts.

In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the social media company said that as many as 83 million of its accounts are fake.

It also reported that as many as five percent of its active users have duplicate accounts.

Facebook members grew to 955 million this year.

It says 1.5 percent of its accounts are likely spam or accounts set up for other malicious activity. The fake accounts are concentrated in developing markets, according to the filing.

It also blames people who set up accounts for non-human entities, such as pets.

There are "inherent challenges" in measuring usage," the social network said.

"We are continually seeking to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false accounts and estimate the total number of such accounts, and such estimates may be affected by improvements or changes in our methodology," the filing continued.

The number of real users is important for Facebook as it seeks to sell advertising.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: facebook; fb
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The number of real users is important for Facebook as it seeks to sell advertising.

Probably under 10 million (regularly active users).

1 posted on 08/02/2012 11:05:19 AM PDT by library user
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To: library user

So ILLEGALS are affecting their economy as well? smurk smurk


2 posted on 08/02/2012 11:10:42 AM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: library user

If I’d been thinking, mine would have been fake too. I put in a minimal amount of factual data but even so, the FB snoopiness is disturbing. I just use it to access a few conservative pages so no big deal to just pull the plug, but what’s out there is out there forever.


3 posted on 08/02/2012 11:10:52 AM PDT by bigbob
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To: library user

My Dog has a Facebook account managed by my Daughter.

The dog has about 50 friends who are cats and dogs.


4 posted on 08/02/2012 11:11:09 AM PDT by PeteB570 ( Islam is the sea in which the Terrorist Shark swims. The deeper the sea the larger the shark.)
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To: library user

And you arrived at that how?


5 posted on 08/02/2012 11:11:58 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: bigbob

Agree I’ve got a FB account with a fake name and throwaway email address.

That’s where I get my daily talking points from Cain and Palin.

Sweet.


6 posted on 08/02/2012 11:13:10 AM PDT by nascarnation
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To: library user

Total number of accounts aren’t really indicative of anything more than unused profiles, at the minimum.

Facebook actually has to show how many eyeballs see ads and the dormant accounts wouldn’t go into that profile.


7 posted on 08/02/2012 11:14:08 AM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously, you won't live through it anyway)
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To: PeteB570


"My Dog has a Facebook account managed by my Daughter.
The dog has about 50 friends who are cats and dogs."




























You live!!
8 posted on 08/02/2012 11:16:44 AM PDT by library user
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To: EEGator
And you arrived at that how?

The burden of proof is not on me, Mr. Zuckerberg.

9 posted on 08/02/2012 11:18:22 AM PDT by library user
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To: nascarnation

Even with a fake name, you can be uniquely identified by the set of your friends, if somebody wants to look for you. Yet another reason to have multiple FB accounts (or none, like me)


10 posted on 08/02/2012 11:18:35 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (If I can't be persuasive, I at least hope to be fun.)
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To: library user

My FB account is totally fake. I only used it a couple of times to get into some deals on the internet that required a Facebook account. Otherwise, I have never used it.


11 posted on 08/02/2012 11:20:25 AM PDT by America_Right (Remember, Republicans have a lot more in common with Democrats than they do with Tea Partiers.)
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To: library user

Shills...


12 posted on 08/02/2012 11:21:28 AM PDT by null and void (Day 1290 of our ObamaVacation from reality - Heroes aren't made Frank, they're cornered...)
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To: library user

Why weren’t ‘real users’ important when they offered stock in the company?


13 posted on 08/02/2012 11:21:37 AM PDT by GeorgeWashingtonsGhost
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To: Vendome
Facebook actually has to show how many eyeballs see ads and the dormant accounts wouldn’t go into that profile.

Which is easy to figure: the number of page views from unique IP addresses per day.

14 posted on 08/02/2012 11:21:53 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (If I can't be persuasive, I at least hope to be fun.)
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To: library user
The potential for users to register multiple accounts is inherant in FB's architecture. FB has compounded their problem by creating incentives for users to have multiple accounts (hosting cooperative games like Farmville, for instance). FB cannot restrict users from creating multiple identities without undercutting the simplicity, openness and flexibility that draws people to FB in the first place.

IMHO, they should consider it a feature, not a bug. The alternative is going to be a much more limited FB architecture and a huge exodus of users and content providers.

15 posted on 08/02/2012 11:27:19 AM PDT by jboot (OPSEC. It's a killjoy, but it may save your life someday.)
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To: library user

60 million of them created by Indian outsourcing firms in order to “Like” Mitt Romney. /sarc


16 posted on 08/02/2012 11:28:56 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: library user

Harry Reid...is that you?


17 posted on 08/02/2012 11:30:08 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: PapaBear3625
Which is easy to figure: the number of page views from unique IP addresses per day.

I'm not dogging on Drudge, cuz I like the guy, but I think the reason he gets so many hits is cuz if you leave his page up on your PC all day, everytime he updates his site (which is dozens, if not hundreds, of times per day) the page auto-refreshes on your screen, which produces copious additional hits per user.

If I go to Drudge at 6am and leave my PC alone, not clicking on anything all day, I bet he gets 50-100 hits, just from my computer alone.

18 posted on 08/02/2012 11:31:21 AM PDT by library user
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To: jboot

Several of my friends had multiple accounts for exactly that reason. Not so much CHEATING at Farmville, but one account for games, one account for everything else, to keep down some of the spam to their personal feed.

There’s a Catbook app (with variants for basically every beastie I’ve ever seen kept as a pet, including rodents and ferrets) for those doing “pet pages” tho. Much easier than a separate signin.


19 posted on 08/02/2012 11:32:51 AM PDT by Fire_on_High (WTB new tagline, PST!)
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To: library user
At least Twitter is thoroughly vetted.
20 posted on 08/02/2012 11:35:02 AM PDT by Slings and Arrows (You can't have IngSoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
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