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Facebook: The billion dollar bot problem

• samizdis 6y ago
  > In the last quarter of 2020 the US social media giant disabled 1.3bn fake accounts — a tally equal to almost half its real monthly active users. User accounts are the basis for advertising sales ... If a percentage of accounts are fake, advertisers should be demanding a discount. > In filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook acknowledges that up to 5 per cent of the 2.8bn accounts it counts may be false, including bots, and another 11 per cent may be duplicates ... This means more than 448m inauthentic accounts. > There are two potential repercussions from inauthentic accounts. Advertisers could use these to argue for lower rates, slowing revenue growth. Facebook could also decide to ramp up spending on fake-busting measures.