Facebook admits 27 crore fake accounts

Social media major, Facebook has agreed that as much as 27 crore accounts on its network are fake, raising questions about the platform's ethics. The company is already in question regarding Russian influence in the US presidential elections .

Announcing its results on Wednesday, the company admitted that there are tens of millions more fake and illegitimate accounts than what it estimated.

Around 2-3 percent of its 2.1 billion monthly users in the third quarter of 2017 were "user-misclassified and undesirable accounts", said Facebook as compared to 1 percent which it had estimated in the month of July.

The company announced the news while disclosing its earnings during in which it reported a 79 percent rise in quarterly profits touching $4.7 billion.

The company also said that improvements to the data is utilized to figure out fake accounts was the reason behind the increase, rather than a sudden soar in fake users, the company however added that there may have been "episodic spikes", mainly in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.

Facebook, which demands users to use their real names and in many cases prove their identity, is making efforts to sanitize itself as compared to other social networking platforms like Twitter.

Many fake accounts include those for businesses and organisations which have been wrongly set up as profiles, rather than FB pages along with those who have willfully set up fake accounts for spamming and other activities prohibited by Facebook.

This news was first reported by Business Insider and could result in increased inspection of the social network as the company faces stringent pressure to disclose how fake news and politically motivated advertising impacted last years US presidential election as well other democracies of the world.

Facebook has also admitted that 12.6 crore users in the United States witnessed advertisements sponsored by Russia, and another 2 crore on Instagram.

Facebook previously had to revise its figures on key statistics including the average time people spend watching videos as well as the number of times users watch advertisers' posts.

Questions were also raised on after Facebook claimed that it reaches more people between the ages of 18 to 24 in the United States as compared to census data.

The Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday night that the company's endeavor to put an end to abuse may hit the company's profitability in future.

Tens of thousands of fake accounts popped up on Facebook before numerous global elections, influencing the perception of voters considerably.

Source: techgig.com