FACEBOOK SAYS IT has 83 million “undesirable” accounts – and wants to shut them down.
According to an updated regulatory filing with the US Security and Exchange Commission, the social network said it has a huge number fake and duplicated profiles – despite the site’s terms of service forbidding users from having more than one personal account or creating accounts for other people.
The company estimates that 4.8 per cent of users have duplicate accounts.
‘Misclassified’ accounts refer to those that have been made for groups, pets or companies. The network says that while group pages are allowed, they must be created as “Pages” rather than profiles and that these can be converted without information being lost.
Facebook estimates that 2.4 per cent of its active accounts are non-human personal accounts.
The company says that parents who make profiles for their children are also in breach of the terms of service, as under-13s are not permitted to join.
Facebook said it believed the percentage of duplicate or false accounts was lower in more developed markets, such as the US or Australia, and higher in developing markets, like Turkey and Indonesia.
It is important for the company to establish a true number of users as it attempts to secure advertising revenue.
Facebook’s user number grew to 955 million users in the second quarter of this year.
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