We estimate that fake accounts represented approximately 3% to 4% of monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook during Q1 2018 and Q4 2017. We share this number in the Facebook quarterly financial results. This estimate may vary each quarter based on spikes or dips in automated fake account creation.
These numbers are largely affected by external factors, such as cyberattacks that increase fake accounts on Facebook. Bad actors try to create fake accounts in large volumes automatically using scripts or bots, with the intent of spreading spam or conducting illicit activities such as scams. The numbers can also be affected by internal factors, including the effectiveness of our detection technology.
In Q1 2018, we disabled 583 million fake accounts, down from 694 million in Q4 2017.
583 million fake accounts in Q1 2018 - I make that somewhere near 75 being created every second of every day. Presumably this is mostly Facebook software versus the bots. The bots create fake accounts and Facebook software blocks or zaps them, a constant battle conducted at enormous speed. Computer versus computer. Seems insanely wasteful.
4 comments:
"Seems insanely wasteful."
From one point of view the whole enterprise seems insanely wasteful, even when it's doing what it's supposed to do.
Sam - I agree, although mine is an outsider's perspective.
Someone once 'weighed' the internet...
Apparently is just a few grammes more than nothing!
(From some silly useless facts department @BBC)!
Scrobs - on the same basis I imagine the entire BBC output is barely more than nothing too. I wouldn't have put it so high!
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