Facebook estimates 83 million profiles are fake

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Story

Facebook has more than 83 million fake profiles, including millions created for users’ pets and a large number of accounts the company deems “undesirable”, it has admitted.

The figure emerged in Facebook’s first quarterly report to US financial regulators since the world’s biggest social network made its much-criticised stock market debut in May.

In a return published this week, the company said 8.7% of its 955 million global users are not real.

There were 83.09 million fake users in total, which Facebook classifies into three groups. The largest is made up of almost 46 million duplicate profiles, accounting for 4.8% of all accounts. The company defined that category as “an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account”.


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/02/facebook-estimates-83-million-profiles-are-fake/

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. Fake profiles are people my friend

Don't make the sock puppets get mad.

[Arctic Dave]

9. It's a sock monkey and her name is, Monkeeh.

She goes everywhere.

[crim son]

38. Bwahahahahahahahah!

You just made my morning!

[Posteritatis]

2. That sounds about what I expected

I know a couple people with duplicate accounts for safety reasons and a few people doing inane things like giving their pets FB pages. The number of bot accounts implied in the article's incredibly low though, so something's working there at least.

It's still a pretty small number of problematic accounts given the sheer size of the site though. I think it's kind of silly for people to be fretting over the numbers involved for this one, though I also long for the day when major companies realize that pushy advertising on social networks isn't going to do much for them in the first place.

[Right Hand of Dog]

3. 83 Million and 1

I started my fake FB page after hearing this story earlier today

[Gman]

22. LOL!

[Raster]

4. I'd say FB's estimate is probably low. Embelish, embelish, embelish.

[Hestia]

6. Agreed - When I used to play Farmville - friends set up multiple accounts so I had like 100 fake

friends accounts just so they could play FV! I'll bet it's closer to 50% or more.

[LadyHawkAZ]

7. I have a few of those

It's less of a headache than adding a bunch of people I don't know.

[tomm2thumbs]

5. sounds like membership in the Tea Party

and Romney is probably buying all the fake Facebook friends for his site so really those are his perfect audience given that fake-is as fake-does

[hobbit709]

8. Not all the info on mine is real.

The people that know me know what's real. the people that don't know, it doesn't matter.

[TrogL]

10. My dogs and my second life avatar all have pages

One day my "suggested friends" was three dogs, two cats and a parakeet. Not sure I liked the look of the parakeet.

[Hugabear]

11. I have one of those "duplicate" accounts

I have one account that I use for my personal stuff and friends - this one is completely private to any prying eyes.

I have another one that I seldom use, keep just in case I need to apply for a job that snoops around for my Facebook page.

[davidpdx]

36. Not a bad idea especially in the US

I only have one and have the tightest level of security and am very selective about who I friend. There are people who have thousands of "friends", but I don't even have 100 yet (I've only been on Facebook for about 3 1/2 years and was kind of a latecomer). I may break that mark this year.

[just1voice]

12. Just posted this on Facebook so my friends pets can read it, LOL

This story makes all those "Just read this on Facebook" comments even dumber than they already were.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. I'll bet a lot of people have a "fake" in their real name to show employers

who demand to see their FB as a condition of employment---and then a "real" account in a phony name where they actually do their socializing. And what about someone with a professional name that is different from their private or family name? Both are "real" they just serve two different purposes.

And what the Astroturf? The employees of special industries who create fictitious accounts at the request of their employer so that they can pretend to represent a grass roots movement? Which one of them is "real" and which one is the "fake"? There are probably a few million "Romney supporters" who fall into this category.

[DCKit]

14. Clearly, that means it's time to buy stock in Facebook.

That number is going to balloon prior to the election.

[Downwinder]

15. 83 million valued at $100 per for the IPO,

no wonder stock price is off.

[liberaltrucker]

16. Where's Captain Obvious when you need him?

[Major Hogwash]

37. Ummm, I believe he's posting over on Facebook as General Failure.

Mue-ha-ha!!!

[AtheistCrusader]

17. I keep one dummy account.

I use it to verify the public security/privacy settings on my real account, to make sure FB is showing only the crap I want it to show, to people that are not directly my friends.

[Lint Head]

18. Probably correlates with 83 million fake people.

[Ian David]

19. I made one for my pet so it could be my neighbor in CityVille.

Even "fake" profiles like that one still get seen by human eyeballs.

[UpInArms]

20. do we now call it

Fakebook?

[sarcasmo]

21. All followers of Mitt the twit.

[newblewtoo]

23. What does that make the BILLIONS

Zuckerberg and friends got?

Is that sucking sound is starting to sound familiar? This is why I got out of the market back in the '90's. Once burned twice shy. I bought Apple at 60 and sold at 18 and was darn glad to get that. It is a rigged game.

[bucolic_frolic]

24. Imagine the Fakes at Yahoo

but they can't figure it out

[tabasco]

25. I wonder why they waited till after the big stock sale to disclose this?

[MrSlayer]

26. I have about ten fakes.

From when I would play the dopey games on there. The better to send yourself meaningless items.

They're fun characters though.

[L0oniX]

27. Our Ecletus parrot Paco has a ton of other bird friends.

[Ron Obvious]

28. Like mine...

I wonder if they've twigged yet that "Lube Monkey" is not my real name.

[tridim]

29. Even with the fake accounts, it looks like they're about to hit a billion

That's impressive and scary.

[wordpix]

30. if you can believe that number

[desolatebloodshed]

31. Well, there is my......

employer profile
college profile
stage name-stripper profile
Etsy, since I sell crafts, profile
my band, I am a musician too, profile
my family profile
and my pets now share a profile (I wouldn't be able to keep up with individual pet profiles)

[klook]

32. "8.7 percent of its 955 million monthly active users..."

Good grief, almost a billion FB user accounts?? Hard to believe only 9 percent of them are fake, actually.

Love the one referenced at the top of the article:



"In a domestic partnership."

[apples and oranges]

33. It's almost a necessity if you play Facebook games

Unless you want your "real" friends spammed by the massive amount of invites and updates the games post.

[Warren DeMontague]

34. Fake? Fake? Why, I never...

http://www.facebook.com/warrentheape

[Heywood J]

35. Bullshit.

Every person I know with a Facebook account has at least five. Couple that with everyone else in this thread referring to the games, cats, birds, employer-friendly accounts, etc. and I don't believe for a second that any less than 33% of accounts are fake. How many of the rest are deleted (but not removed from the statistics) or outdated?

Or does "undesirable" include people too poor to market to?