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by tatsuke95 5017 days ago
>"She has at last count at least three accounts, possibly more, which she uses for different purposes – some of them just to play those stupid spammy Facebook games and quizzes."

Impossible! According to Facebook, multiple accounts are not an issue, and people like this are outliers!

And yet, almost everyone I know has more than one account. That 900MM user number is phonier than a three-dollar-bill. I wonder what the real number is?
2 comments
freehunter 5017 days ago
One of my accounts got stolen by someone from Paraguay last week. Rather than getting it back, I just set up a new one. All I use it for is for getting coupons and deals when a company makes me "like" their page to get 5% off a hot dog.
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unreal37 5017 days ago
Facebook has 955MM "monthly active uniques". That's not number of accounts (which is surely over 1B), that is number of active users over a 30 day period.

So all these fake accounts - people are using them (active). Ads are being displayed, activity is happening, Facebook is making money on every single one of 955MM accounts.

So what makes them phony?

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tatsuke95 5017 days ago
>"So what makes them phony?"

Let's start with the fact that in the article, a 13-year old girl is using multiple accounts to play games, and nothing more. Yes, she logs in and is counted as an "monthly active user". Yes, ads are being served to her. That's the problem.

She's one person. But as far as Facebook (and, hence, advertisers) are concerned, she's three. Do you really believe the demographic information she's entered in the fake accounts is accurate? Do you think that she uses the fake accounts with the same commercial intent? As someone who himself has multiple accounts, I'm skeptical.

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lostnet 5017 days ago
An account that like's people who pay for more friends on ebay is an example of a an active user.

Let's suppose some of these services use real workers to log in to each account. Each worker will log in how many thousands of accounts in 30 days? What Ad will they respond to unless they are also being paid for click fraud?

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popee 5017 days ago
Yeah, unique as primary key in relation database :-)
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