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I noted that Facebook yesterday announced it now had 2 billion users.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40424769
I wondered to myself do they mean distinct users or 2 billion user accounts (with the potential that any one user could have multiple accounts). However, why would anyone want multiple Facebook accounts or for that matter multiple accounts on one social media platform (and yes that includes LinkedIn)?
I came up with the following list of reasons:
- Someone undertaking nefarious or criminal activities having at least two accounts one normal, one or more for their other activities
- Spies/Police/Private Investigators try to track and stay close to potential cyber criminals or others they are investigating, having normal accounts and one or more accounts for their undercover activities
- Someone who lost their password and previous account details (i.e. they have stopped using the email address they used to logon by) and just set-up a new account
- Someone who wants to keep a wider gap between their different circles (e.g. Work, Family, Friends, Dating) having a different account for each (I believe you can separate out various connections on most social media platforms into some form of group/circle if you want but some people may prefer more of an air gap.)
- Someone who creates several fake profiles to comment on or connect with their own profile and make themselves look more popular than they are
Can anyone add to this?
Has anyone done analysis in this area? How could we tell if someone has set-up a fake account or multiple accounts (what would indicate to us that it is a fake/multiple account)? Do social media platforms have ways to distinguish between, number of accounts and number of distinct users or at least narrow the field?
Not trying to take anything away from Facebook’s achievement here as it is very impressive whether it is distinct users or user accounts, though I believe the above does have implications regarding the full reach of social media.
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Bob undefined
Museum Educator at Dewitt Museum & Sumpter Valley Railway Depot
6mo
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When "friending" on Soc Media, check for numerous aliases/too many accts. What is too many accts? Well, first check for name provided. Even with 2 billion subscribers World Wide, there are usually only a reasonable number of persons of a given name. When you see an exceptional number for one namesake, many with no profile pic or avatar. I have found it is best to check out profiles because some are essentially a shell, some have sketchy info, profile pics are random thefts of pics around the internet. Often there is little or no content, or content is repetitious over numerous postings. There are tons of these situations on FB and perhaps on other media. When I see 40 accounts for a simple but not too common name, I investigate further or simply block the whole lot because you cannot be sure of the connections between any of them. That is a sorry state of affairs, and I think that FB should either do as IG does and blocking a known person also blocks all their others and more they create, or would allow, by your choice,, to do a blanket block of any and all of the same name. Their current methods only encourage abuse in my experience, but it does keep the account numbers high. JMO
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Steve Marshall
Welder at Santos Ltd
8mo
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Or cheating biiootch like mine
Nina Swer
--
1y
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Narcissists
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Barb P.
Peels Wedding Officiant - Wedding Officiant/Minister for the Peel Region and surrounding areas
1y
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prior to FB allowing separate pages for different groups as stated above, I originally created my first account to be strictly for family & friends. When I started my business, I didn't want to have my potential business clients see my personal information, posts from family & friends, plus the potential security/privacy issues of my personal contacts, so I created a separate account for my business. Now FB has the Pages option & the ability to have multiple pages to keep things like this separate & secure, however, they don't have the ability for me to combine the two unique accounts together (yet) hopefully, one day I'll be able to do so soon
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Sergey Anisimov
Software Architect at Schlumberger
6y
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Someone with a split-personality syndrome?
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