Social media giant Facebook has said that it has approximately 275 million duplicate accounts out of its 2.50 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2019.
Facebook in its latest annual report said, “As of December 31, 2019, we had 2. 50 billion MAUs (monthly active users), an increase of 8 per cent from December 31, 2018. Users in India, Indonesia and the Philippines represented key sources of growth in2019, relative to the same period in2018,” the company said.
“In the fourth quarter of 2019, we estimated that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 11 per cent of our worldwide MAUs. We believe the percentage of duplicate accounts is meaningfully higher in developing markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam, as compared to more developed markets,” it added.
According to Facebook, a duplicate account is one that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account.
The company has divided ‘false’ accounts into two categories—misclassified accounts and violations accounts. While the first category represents accounts where users have created profiles for a business, organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet; the violating account represent user profiles that the site determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate FB’s terms of service, such as spamming.
“The estimates of duplicate and false accounts are based on an internal review of a limited sample of accounts, and we apply significant judgment in making this determination,” it explained.
The company revealed that in the fourth quarter of 2019, false accounts may have represented approximately 5 per cent of its worldwide MAUs.
Worldwide DAUs (Daily Active Users) increased 9 per cent to1.66 billion on average during December 2019 from 1. It was 52 billion during December 2018.
(With input from agencies)