An ex-classmate of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given very bold statements about the social media giant, claiming that 50% of the profiles on the platform are fake.
In the report, Aaron Greenspan, the old Harvard pal of the CEO, alleges that there is no way to measure the company’s true Monthly User Base (MAU) accurately.
In other words, he claims that Facebook’s reported metrics overestimate the number of real monthly active users by adding up fake and duplicate accounts, and the real number of accounts on FB is much less than that.
He has also highlighted in the report how the fake profiles defraud users, advertisers and investors alike. Furthermore, he accused Facebook of selling ads to hundreds of millions of ghost buyers — users who don’t actually exist.
While Facebook’s own quarterly investment reports state that it has over 2 billion monthly active users, Greenspan thinks that the numbers are packed with fake accounts which are smart enough to trick the social network’s algorithms into passing it off as real ones.
It is to be noted that Greenspan reached a confidential settlement with Facebook in 2009 over a trademark dispute regarding the term “the Face Book.”
In response to the allegations, Facebook has strongly denied the claims in a statement to Mashable: “This is unequivocally wrong and responsible reporting means reporting facts, even if it’s about fake accounts.”
