>"Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles." I've been singing this

>"Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles." I've been singing this tune for a bit. In my experience, this is a big problem. If Facebook is saying this is the actual number, then consider is much higher. Facebook, as well as every player in their ecosystem, is economically incentivized to inflate the usage numbers. It's why Facebook is "worth" what it's worth, and how every single application on the platform is measured for investment. Games are literally ranked by their daily active users. I spent some time combing through the data of an oldish FB game (as an employee), with about 300k MAU and 150k DAU. We figured that about 40% of the accounts playing on our game daily were fake, created solely to take advantage of any mechanics where it was advantageous to have more friends. Some people would have 10 or more accounts. Now there are businesses sprouting up in countries where labour costs are cheap who sell "likes"; you can buy thousands for less than a hundred bucks. Mostly fake accounts. And this is only the blatantly fake accounts. What about the people who actively, honestly use Facebook, but have lied about minor details that are important to advertisers? Things like their age, sex, name, jobs, location, whatever? I did this myself. And yet, the value of the advertising (and Facebook directly) is derived from these measures. >"One, going by the name Agung Pratama Sevenfoldism, showed his date of birth as 1997 and said he had been a manager at Chevron in 2010. >Mr Tinmouth said this seemed "unlikely". I'd say.