Even though Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have been under scrutiny as of late, being investigated on privacy breaches and its part of the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is still considered one of the most successful companies ever. Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users and a market capitalization that spiked at more than $600 billion.
But the tech giant is facing another setback. According to a new study, Facebook has a major fake account problem.
“Facebook has been lying to the public about the scale of its problem with fake accounts, which likely exceed 50% of its network,” Think Computer software founder Aaron Greenspan says in an in-depth 70-page research report entitled Reality Check. “Its official metrics—many of which it has stopped reporting quarterly—are self-contradictory and even farcical. The company has lost control of its own product.”
Why is it important to know about fake accounts? Because they can affect Facebook and its users in a number of ways. One way is through its advertising, which is purchased based on a possible target audience of more than 2 billion real users. So if the number of users is off, advertisers are paying more and getting less.
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Another issue is “likes.” “Fake accounts click on advertising at random, or ‘like’ pages, to throw off anti-fraud algorithms. Fake accounts look real if they do not follow a clear pattern. This kind of activity defrauds advertisers, but rewards Facebook with revenue,” Plainsite reported.
Greenspan wrote, “The truth is that at this point, Mark Zuckerberg may in fact be the greatest con man in history, having pulled off a complex fraud at one point valued at approximately ten times the scale of convicted financier Bernard Madoff’s historic and epic Ponzi scheme.”
Also, fake accounts put real Facebook users at risk of scams, fake news, extortion, and other forms of deception. And, as the Russian investigation has taught us, these fake accounts can involve governments.
This isn’t the only time Facebook has been faced with massive numbers of fake accounts. In 2018 Facebook said it disabled almost 1.3 billion fake accounts.
“Bad actors try to create fake accounts in large volumes automatically using scripts or bots, with the intent of spreading spam or conducting illicit activities such as scams,” the 2018 Facebook report said, adding. “The decrease in fake accounts disabled between Q4 and Q1 is largely due to this variation.”
But even this purge didn’t make that much of a dent. Facebook remained riddled with fake accounts. “Of the Facebook accounts that remain, Facebook says between 3 and 4 percent are likely fakes. That means somewhere between 66 million and 88 million fake accounts that have escaped scrutiny,” Inc. reported.
