Facebook struggling to identify multiple account holders: Report

Facebook is struggling to identify and deal with active users creating multiple accounts on its platform, the Wall Street Journal report states, citing internal documents of the social media behemoth.

An internal presentation at the company reportedly noted that it was “very prevalent” among individual users to have multiple accounts.

The findings came after Facebook looked at around 5,000 recent sign-ups and found that between 32% and 56% were created by users who already had previous accounts.

Additionally, another memo from May reportedly found that the number of Facebook users in the US who are in their 20s and active on the platform at least once a month is often greater than the total population of Americans in that demographic. The memo noted this could mean Facebook's number of daily active users could be “less trustable”, the Journal report states.

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A spokesman for Facebook told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s not a revelation that we study duplicate accounts, and this snapshot of information doesn’t tell the full story.

“Nothing in this story changes the estimate of duplicate accounts we disclose in our public filings, which includes new users, or that we provide context on in our ad products, ad interfaces, in our help centres, and in other places.”

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He said that advertisers continue to use Facebook because it gets them the results they want.

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The company says in its quarterly public reports that about 10 per cent of its nearly 3 billion listed users are fake or duplicate accounts.

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According to the WSJ, however, Facebook staff are concerned that its estimates to advertisers may count many duplicate accounts, which often occur when users get locked out of their original profiles and make new ones.

The company is currently fighting a lawsuit by advertisers who accuse it of knowingly overstating the number of people their messages might reach, which Facebook denies.

In March this year, Facebook Inc said it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December and that it had over 35,000 people working on tackling misinformation on its platform.

(With inputs from agencies)