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Our third Reality Check report: Facebook, Inc. $FB. We link the company's origins to the Cambridge Analytica affair, and find that over 50% of Facebook accounts are very likely fake, despite Facebook's many false and self-contradictory disclosures. plainsite.org/realitycheck/f… 
These findings have implications for United States national security and for $FB investors. Although the exact percentage of fake accounts is impossible to pin down, what is clear is that the company has been lying for years, and its lawyers know that it has.
The key table: what is actually going with $FB's fake account problem? Mostly, Facebook won't say. It stopped reporting quarterly numbers in its SEC filings long ago. There may be an update next week. Otherwise, the numbers make no sense whatsoever and are couched in disclaimers.
The significance of this dissembling cannot be overstated. If, as we allege, $FB is lying about its fake accounts, that means that it could be liable to its advertising customers for billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains, over and above what advertisers have already sued over.
It would also mean that the 2016 election fiasco—not to mention genocides, other election problems, etc.—were not as much inevitable events as the side-effects of what may be the largest fraud ever perpetrated in dollar terms (by measuring $FB's market capitalization).
Most everyone thinks they know the story of Facebook's founding. After all, they saw the movie: The Social Network. But The Social Network didn't ever actually show you what the Winklevosses and Divya Narendra were working on. Because it looked like this.
The book the movie was based on left out one of Mark Zuckerberg's major inspirations, and his tendency to lie and manipulate both in private and in public. That tendency has had a major impact on the world. Here's Mark lying in public at Stanford in 2005.
Turns out, even Ben Mezrich, the guy who wrote that book, now admits that there may have been some lying going on. (Psst: he's the one that told many of them.) The story of $FB's success is the story of a chain of sociopaths each inflating the next's lies. cnbc.com/video/2018/03/…
Lies matter. Mark now stands alone (not counting Sheryl Sandberg) at the helm of $FB, having alienated almost everyone who was there when things got started. This statement from co-founder Adam D'Angelo has not been previously reported. If he doesn't trust Mark, should investors?
Which brings us full circle to the fake account issue. If the person in charge is trusted by no one close to him, has a documented history of lying, and depends on fake accounts to prop up metrics that Wall Street wants to hear (since he can't get China to do the job)...
Fun fact: Facebook and the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany, which no longer exists) have this in common: both really liked reporting near-perfect numbers. The communists thought 100% of votes would seem too unbelievable. But 98.85%? Sure. No one can argue with that.
Incidentally, for the elderly, disabled and lonely, Facebook has built a "community" that is actually a torture device. Many, many people sign on to find friends, and instead find a literal lifetime supply of impostors, fraudsters, extortionists, and various other fake accounts.
If Facebook can't tell the difference between a real account and a fake one (and in millions of cases, it can't), how does it expect a user with actual brain damage to make the determination? How much liability has the company assumed by allowing such users to be scammed?
The sad truth is that if journalists had just been more skeptical (and done their jobs) earlier, by a year, or two, or three, or five, or twelve, then they might have saved their profession. Instead, they handed it to a sociopath on a silver platter.
Because he wore flip-flops.
Let's see what happens. Hey @facebook! How many of your accounts are fake?
Purely anecdotal, but responses from Reddit:
- "I have 4 facebook accounts, so yes, I agree"
- "That's not surprising. I'm willing to bet that Twitter is even worse..."
- "I’d be surprised if it’s only half, I’d bet that more $FB accounts are fake/stale/inactive than are “real.”"
- "I have 4 facebook accounts, so yes, I agree"
- "That's not surprising. I'm willing to bet that Twitter is even worse..."
- "I’d be surprised if it’s only half, I’d bet that more $FB accounts are fake/stale/inactive than are “real.”"
The lovely folks at @facebook PR never answered us from earlier today. (Patiently waiting for the eventual announcement from Sheryl Sandberg that PlainSite is wrong; internal estimates actually peg fake accounts at 60%.)
Gizmodo reporter Kashmir Hill writes about giving up Facebook...and creating a fake account to see what happens. Guess what. Despite Facebook's supposed 99%+ success rate at finding fake accounts before they're reported, It's still there.
Yesterday, we published that Mark aspired to re-create AOL Instant Messenger: "In keeping with Mark’s interest in building a better AIM, WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus are helping to fuel the company’s growth." Today, this from @MikeIsaac. nytimes.com/2019/01/25/tec…
Embedded in an RT article that we will not link to is $FB's official response to our report: "This report is completely wrong and not based on any facts or research. This is unequivocally wrong and responsible reporting means reporting facts, even if it’s about fake accounts."
First, Facebook did not respond to our question (above) on Twitter about how many fake accounts it has. Second, this is such an over-the-top response ("not based on any facts or research") that it makes Facebook PR look somewhat ridiculous and desperate. There are 163 footnotes.
Additionally, some of the facts discussed in our report are facts that Facebook has previously refused to dispute. Nonetheless, that is the company's response now, at least as published by Russia Today, which is itself a Russian state propaganda outlet.
It really does seem that $FB issued its wild response exclusively through the Kremlin's mouthpiece. Breathtaking. Especially because Facebook does NOT file fake account estimates with the SEC every quarter. It stopped doing that in Q4 2017. It says so in their own SEC Form 10-K!
The same "unequivocally wrong" language now appears in Mashable as well, so at least we can be more certain that Facebook actually did author that response arguing that there are no facts whatsoever in the 70-page report. Problem one is many of the facts came from $FB itself.
The SEC filings came from $FB. The transparency portal data came from $FB. The IM conversations came from Mark. The e-mails came from Mark and his employees. The court documents are court documents. Does Facebook really now want to dispute these as facts?
Problem two is that, as discussed on the @QTRResearch podcast, Facebook's response to Russia Today and Mashable contains a lie: that it is providing updates on its fake account numbers to the SEC quarterly. It is not. Q1, Q2 and Q3 2018 numbers were all from Q4 2017.
Problem three is that Mark Zuckerberg's op-ed in the @WSJ, one day after we released our report, contains even more lies (styled as "facts"). It also contains some top-notch Orwellian doublespeak. For example...
"If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone." No one asked $FB to be committed to serving everyone. This is akin to the Nazis saying that if it stopped being committed to serving all Jews, it wouldn't be living up to Nazi ideals.
"Whoa there, PlainSite!" you're probably saying. $FB isn't Nazism! Of course it's not. It's a completely different organization that is *also* responsible (according to the @UN) for a genocide in which thousands of Rohingya have been killed and over 700,000 refugees have fled.
Mark says, "I’ve heard many questions about our business model." What he means is that there have been calls for him to resign, he's been hauled before Congress, and can't travel to the UK without being forced to appear before Parliament to answer for Cambridge Analytica.
"On Facebook, you have control over what information we use to show you ads, and you can block any advertiser from reaching you." False. He's lying. Again.
"Clickbait and other junk may drive engagement in the near term, but it would be foolish for us to show this intentionally, because it’s not what people want." It would be foolish. Yet there it is, terabytes worth of it, all on Facebook.
"There’s no question that we collect some information for ads—but that information is generally important for security and operating our services as well." $FB's security is so bad that it embedded a disabled video player that could be used to hack any profile, including Mark's.
"We give people complete control over whether we use this information for ads..." False. Another lie.
"In a global survey, half the businesses on Facebook say they’ve hired more people since they joined. They’re using our services to create millions of jobs." Yet another lie. There's no objective evidence whatsoever that $FB has created millions of jobs. Nor does Mark cite any.
It short, it's pretty rich for $FB to allege that the report has zero facts, turn around, publish an op-ed nominally by Mark with "facts" in the title, and then spew a bunch of lies. But hey, in the words of Fiddler on the Roof, "When you're rich, they think you really know."
Well, there you have it. $FB's spokeswoman told Business Insider the same thing Facebook told Russia Today: there are no facts in our "unequivocally wrong" report. "She did not give any further explanation." businessinsider.com/facebook-dismi…
Hey @Facebook! Does this woman work for you? If not, are you still arguing that our report contains no facts? And why are you allowing random individuals to impersonate Facebook employees on your own platform, which you control?
