Facebook may have 275 million duplicate accounts globally

“As of December 31, 2019, we had 2.5 billion monthly active users, an increase of 8% from December 31, 2018. Users in India, Indonesia and the Philippines represented key sources of growth in 2019, relative to the same period in 2018,” a report by Facebook said

According to Facebook, a duplicate account is one that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account

Facebook has approximately 275 million duplicate accounts out of its 2.5 billion monthly active users as on December 31, 2019, the social networking site said in its latest annual report.

“As of December 31, 2019, we had 2.5 billion MAUs (monthly active users), an increase of 8% from December 31, 2018. Users in India, Indonesia and the Philippines represented key sources of growth in 2019, relative to the same period in 2018,” the report said.

“In the fourth quarter of 2019, we estimated that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 11% 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 said.

According to Facebook, a duplicate account is one that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account.

“False” accounts have been divided into two categories — user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet and violating accounts, which 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.

Duplicate and false accounts are quite difficult to measure at the scale and it is possible that the actual number of duplicate and false accounts may vary significantly from the estimates, it further said.

The networking site said in the fourth quarter of 2019, it is estimated that false accounts may have represented approximately 5% of its worldwide MAUs.

Worldwide DAUs (Daily Active Users) increased 9% to 1.66 billion on average during December 2019 from 1.52 billion during December 2018.

Users in India, Indonesia and the Philippines represented key sources of growth in DAUs during December 2019, relative to the same period in 2018.