Over 83 million Facebook users “fake”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook has revealed that it believes there are now more than 83 million fake users on the social network, BBC News said.

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 users, user-misclassified accounts amounted to 2.4%, and 1.5% of users were described as "undesirable".

The estimate came at a time of growing concern about the value of marketing on the platform. 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.