Lots of fake Facebook accounts
Last week Twitter had to sheepishly admit that they'd been inflating their numbers accidently, now it's Facebook's turn to sheepishly made an admission.
Facebook had estimated that the amount of fake, or duplicate, accounts on their network was previously in the 2-3% range, but now it's looking like it's more like 6-10%. On a network with over 2 billion users, that number could be as high as 270 million fake accounts which is pretty huge.
While there is more and more pressure on Facebook to get rid of accounts that are fake, or just setup for spamming purposes, Facebook probably isn't so excited to drop their numbers by 10% so I don't imagine they'll be doing mass deletions anytime soon.
That means that as many as 270 million of the platform's 2.1-billion-strong user base could be fraudulent — a population verging on the size of the United States.
Unlike Twitter's anything-goes attitude, Facebook is famously strict about verifying the real-life identity of each of its users. In some cases, it even goes so far as to demand official documentation.
Yet fake accounts have still managed to proliferate on the platform — some because of innocent user mistakes and others created to spread spam or operate as part of shady networks of bots.
