Every company that has an online presence and signs up users or customers has fake accounts. Apple claims to have about 1.5-billion users. I have three iCloud accounts; one ancient one for iTunes, one for iCloud and Messages, and another because I preferred the email address when I set up the account.
Making multiple or fake accounts online is easy. That’s why Facebook deletes hundreds of millions of accounts. No, not hundreds of millions. Billions. As in more than 3-billion in a six month period.
Facebook says it removed more than 3 billion fake accounts from October to March, twice as many as the previous six months.
Facebook took down 2.19 billion fake accounts during the first quarter of 2019
There. It’s math.
More than 3-billion fake accounts taken down from Facebook since October of last year. 3-billion. How many accounts does Facebook have? The company won’t say exactly, but does say it has about 2.4-billion monthly active users, so that indicates online fakery is an ongoing problem.
The numbers must be accurate because you know they can’t put it on the internet if it isn’t true.
As far as fake accounts go, it estimates that five percent of monthly active accounts aren’t real.
Now it’s starting to get complicated. Facebook has fake accounts, fake accounts that get used, and regular user accounts of the non-fake variety.
Facebook on its goals with fake accounts:
Preventing abuse from fake accounts but also giving people the power to share through authentic accounts. We have to strike the right balance between these goals.
Uh huh. Because Facebook is always so honest, open, and up front about everything it does.
In some sense that’s actually true when compared to Apple which divulges almost nothing except financial numbers these days. How many users? About 1.5-billion. How many iPhone users? About 1-billion. Do the math on iPad and Mac. iPad has about triple the number of Mac customers.
If a company is online then fake accounts will grow. I have no doubt that Apple has a plan in place, quietly executed to rid iCloud of fake accounts, to ensure that users and customers– they are not the same– have what they need and nothing else.
The huge number of fake accounts that Facebook deletes every quarter should tell us something about the nature of humanity, too. Humans love to manipulate other humans for money.
Facebook does it. Google does it. Yes, Apple does it, too.