A Former Classmate Of Mark Zuckerberg Claims That Half of Facebook's Users Are Fake

Recently, an old college friend of Mark Zuckerberg asserted that Facebook hosts over a billion fake accounts in his 70-page report titled ‘Reality Check’. However, the social networking giant has unequivocally denied the claim.

To be more specific, Aaron Greenspan, Zuckerberg's Harvard University classmate as well as a vociferous critic of Facebook in the past, published a report which was 70 pages long claimed that 50% of Facebook's accounts are 'very likely fake'.

According to the report, Greenspan stated that the company has been inflating its user account statistics since 2004. Moreover, he also mentioned that he invented houseSystem, an online student portal which was supposedly one of the original Facebook prototypes. Greenspan also revealed that he entered into a confidential settlement with Mark Zuckerberg and the company in 2009 over his claims and was paid a settlement from the company, but did not reveal exactly how much.

"The founder of the original Facebook" Aaron Greenspan (On the left) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (On the right)

As per Greenspan, Facebook has made a fool of everyone about the number of fake accounts on its network, while in fact, the number of fake accounts could exceed 50% of all active accounts. Greenspan further stated:

However, Facebook has emphatically denied the allegations. As per the company's spokesman:

In the “Reality Check” report, Greenspan also quoted the actual figures for the increase in the number of user-misclassified, undesirable and duplicate accounts on Facebook.

According to Facebook's quarterly earnings results in Q2 2017, the company estimated that “duplicate” accounts might have represented approximately 6 percent of their worldwide monthly active users (MAUs) while user-misclassified and undesirable accounts might have accounted for 1 percent of their worldwide MAUs.

The report stated:

Nonetheless, in its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook estimated that only between 3 to 4 percent of its accounts on the platform were fake, significantly differs from what Greenspan estimated in the report.