Facebook has officially acknowledged that 13% of its accounts are not legitimate users, according to recent financial reports. This revelation comes amid the company's record-breaking third quarter, where revenue reached $10.3 billion with over 6 million advertisers on the platform.

Of Facebook's 2.07 billion monthly users:

• 10% (207 million) are duplicate accounts
• 2-3% (up to 60 million) are misclassified or undesirable accounts

These fake accounts include business profiles that should be pages, spam accounts, and profiles created for prohibited activities. Facebook noted increased fake account activity from countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, describing them as "episodic spikes."

The company attributes these new findings to improved methodology for detecting duplicate accounts, which will help provide more accurate data for advertisers' campaign reach estimates.

In response, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has committed to implementing enhanced security measures, despite potential impacts on profitability: "We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. I am dead serious about this."

This issue has drawn attention from U.S. lawmakers, particularly in light of Russian-backed advertising on the platform. Democratic senators are pushing Facebook to identify and notify users who were exposed to such ads.

The discovery of these fake accounts raises important questions about social media metrics and their reliability for businesses and advertisers using the platform.

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