Facebook has revealed that 83 million of its accounts could be fake, accounting for nearly 9% of its total users, as the social network comes under increasing pressure to meet advertiser and shareholder demands.
In company filings published this week, it said 8.7% of its 955 million active users might not be real.
Duplicate profiles made up 4.8% of the fakes, user-misclassified accounts amounted to 2.4%, and 1.5% of users were described as “undesirable”.
In total, the company said it estimated there were 83.09 million fake users, which it classified in three groups.
The largest group of “fakes” were duplicates, which the company defined as “an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account.”
Others were described as “user-misclassified” where, Facebook explained “users have created personal profiles for a business, organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet”.
Finally, “undesirable” accounts were profiles deemed to be in breach of Facebook’s terms of service. Typically, this means profiles which have been used for sending out spam messages or other content.
The figures were revealed in company filings which state:
We also seek to identify ‘false’ accounts, which we divide into two categories: (1) user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet (such entities are permitted on Facebook using a Page rather than a personal profile under our terms of service); and (2) undesirable accounts, which represent user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming… We are continually seeking to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false accounts.
The figure is important because Facebook relies on a targeted form of advertising using the ‘Like’ button. Fake accounts could lead to a high number of fake ‘Likes’.
The figures come at a time when businesses are looking at what impact Facebook has on customers.
General Motors, the third-largest advertiser in the US, took the decision in May to stop using paid advertising.
The world’s biggest social network has seen its value fall since being listed on the Nasdaq.
Last month, the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones set up a fake company called VirtualBagel to investigate allegations of fake “likes”.
His investigation found that the large majority of “likes” for the fake firm originated from the Middle East and Asia.
Last week, digital distribution firm Limited Press alleged that, based on its own analytics software, 80% of clicks on its advertisements within Facebook had come from fake users.
In a post on its Facebook page, the company said: “Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reply.
“Do we know who the bots belong too [sic]? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes.”
After a surge of attention to the company, it has since removed the Facebook posting, and said Facebook was now looking into its concerns.
View Facebook’s official SEC filings here