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Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#41

Post by fitzpasd »

Andrenid wrote: post #12
jgroome wrote: post #6

Been using Facebook every day since 2007. Recently though I've noticed my visits to the site drop to maybe once or twice per day, whereas at its peak I was checking it multiple times per hour. I think in their desire to work out what exactly makes them money, they've changed the way you're supposed to use the site. Where I used to see a news feed full of (mostly mundane but still interesting) status updates and photo…

My massive decline in use is directly correlated to how annoying they've made it to use. Eg: You can't have your feed always sort by "Most Recent", it keeps defaulting to "Top Stories", keeping old/stagnant stories at the top of my feed just because they got a few comments, while not showing me the new stuff. Also, the sheer amount of crap they shove in your face now. " Likes TOYOTA!" then a big post by Toyota shoved…

I believe that if you group all your friends into a list 'myfriends' and select that as your newsfeed, it will be sorted by 'Most Recent'.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#42

Post by samstave »

malenm wrote: post #35
samstave wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to spend weeks vigilantly managing how it displays data to you sound like a nightmare.

It was pretty annoying, not gonna lie, but weeks may have been a bit of a stretch - I have about 450 friends and I'd say after a couple days of 'vigilance' I was 90% of the way there, but there were stragglers that showed up for a while after that. It wasn't until everything reverted and started showing up again that it truly felt like a nightmare.

Sure, but that is still too much work.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#43

Post by conradfr »

freehunter wrote: post #37
conradfr wrote: post #31

I am in a complicated relationship on FB with my fish. Who has a lot more fish and human friends than me (~800 against 99). Never understood how he gets new friend requests everyday.

I did an experiment a few years ago where I set up a profile for someone who supposedly went to my university. His pictures were pulled from the profile of a male model, the rest was all made up. I went through every profile I could get and sent friend requests. I actually hit the 5000 friends limit. Usually I would send a message saying "hey we met at X party last night!" if I could find that information on their pu…

Notbad.jpg

The funny thing is that I NEVER asked anyone from my fish account and he now has friends from all over the world, while his name is "My fish Ploup" in French.

About your fake account and its birthday wishes, An experiment could be to put a erroneous birthday date. I guess that day you can get a lot of wishes, even from close friends. We are just lazy I guess.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#46

Post by ServerGeek »

bmunro wrote: post #21

I have a 'fake' account. It's used purely for logging into Spotify, as there is no other way to get a Spotify account.

I also have a 'fake' account I use for Spotify, as well as to like random stuff without bothering/pissing-off my friends and family.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#47

Post by georgespencer »

muyuu wrote: post #25
tatsuke95 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could they tell what is active? I mean really tell? It's difficult. Besides, the more accounts they can report as active, the more "reach" they can sell to advertisers, and the higher the prices advertisers have to pay for that space.

It's difficult with strong accuracy, with a 5% margin I don't think it's hard. Sure they can fake their reports, but they do know quite well how many active users they have.

Active users are probably the key to identifying fake and inactive users. There are likely to be patterns of use on Facebook from active users which apply themselves irrespective of whether a given user is a power user, casual user, etc. Adding friends, sending messages, checking other people's walls, having other people check their wall.

Anyone who doesn't conform to this pattern to within about 10% either side (not enough use / too much use) is probably a fake or spam account.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#48

Post by caffeine5150 »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #39
jgroome wrote: post #6

Been using Facebook every day since 2007. Recently though I've noticed my visits to the site drop to maybe once or twice per day, whereas at its peak I was checking it multiple times per hour. I think in their desire to work out what exactly makes them money, they've changed the way you're supposed to use the site. Where I used to see a news feed full of (mostly mundane but still interesting) status updates and photo…

I've had a similar experience and similar thoughts. I'm a strong believer in free markets, etc, but sometimes I don't understand the unending need for growth (i.e. why is it considered a bad thing that Facebook is so large that it doesn't have much room for growth?) If you're large and profitable, what's wrong with that? It often seems like the relentless pursuit for growth leads to short-term decisions to increase p…

I think its a fundamental flaw of the public company ecosystem. Management is driven to have a very short-term, myopic view of shareholder value (i.e. stock price quarter to quarter). This was made much worse by the rise in profile of analysts in the late 90's tech boom with increased focus on short term earnings guidance. Perhaps eventually Zuckerberg will be replaced by a more market-savvy CEO. Also being public will force a giant set of obligations and priorities that has nothing to do with their offerings (shareholder proxies, disclosure, class action derivative suits, SOX compliance, investor relations) and will suck huge resources.

Being public will make FB a poorer company and service.

As a side note, I love how reporters of newly public companies quote risk factors from a 10-k and present them as some significant revelation of a skeleton in the closet. Risk factors are required disclosure and attorneys stuff them with horrible sounding proclamations that often are really just stating the obvious when you really read them. They are cheap insurance for the public company - not sure anyone declines to buy a stock based on risk factors but the company can say "I told you" in the event of certain shareholder suits.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#50

Post by rfurmani »

klawed wrote: post #40
joshuahedlund wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a similar experience and similar thoughts. I'm a strong believer in free markets, etc, but sometimes I don't understand the unending need for growth (i.e. why is it considered a bad thing that Facebook is so large that it doesn't have much room for growth?) If you're large and profitable, what's wrong with that? It often seems like the relentless pursuit for growth leads to short-term decisions to increase p…

You're questioning the fundamental philosophy ow Wall Street (I almost wrote capitalism instead but I don't know if that's true). Solvency is not enough to drive stock prices because the price of a stock is a bet on the future value of the company, not the present value. I don't like it either... Edit:fixing phone-induced typos.

It's not really about "like" or "not like" but fundamental economics and mathematics: things that grow behave differently then things that don't, and are worth more. Suppose FB found a way to consistently make 1B a year, give it to the investors, and only grow as much as inflation. Then the valuation would settle on something like 10-15 billion (plus however much cash it has on hand at that time). And a solid part of the market will love it as a long-term investment and tout its value. On the other hand, to value it at 50 billion you have to assume that its earnings will at least quintuple over time, so good luck to them.
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