Facebook denies that half of its accounts are fake

A former classmate of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the social media giant hosts one billion fake accounts on its platform.

Facebook has termed "unequivocally false" a report that claims the social networking platform hosts one billion fake accounts, a media report said.

According to a Daily Mail report, a former classmate of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the social media giant hosts one billion fake accounts on its platform, or 50 per cent of its total users worldwide.

In a 70-page report titled 'Reality Check', Aaron Greenspan, who attended the Harvard University with Zuckerberg from 2002 to 2004, claimed that Facebook has been inflating its global user count since 2004.

He also alleged that he was the founder of the original Facebook and was paid an undisclosed settlement from Facebook in 2009 over his claims.

"Facebook has been lying to the public about the scale of its problem with fake accounts, which likely exceed 50 per cent of its network," Greenspan said in the report.

"Its official metrics - many of which it has stopped reporting quarterly - are self-contradictory and even farcical."

However, Facebook has denied the findings.

"This is unequivocally wrong and responsible reporting means reporting facts, even if it's about fake accounts," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying to the Daily Mail.

Greenspan cited a rise in the number of duplicate and user-misclassified and undesirable accounts on Facebook which the company began reporting several years ago in its quarterly earnings results.

In the second quarter of 2017, Facebook reported that duplicate accounts or "an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account", comprised six per cent of its global monthly active users [MAUs]. - IANS