Facebook has officially acknowledged that 13% of its accounts are not legitimate users. During their third-quarter earnings report, where the company announced $10.3 billion in revenue and 2.07 billion monthly users, they revealed some concerning statistics about their user base.

The breakdown of non-legitimate accounts:

• 10% are duplicate accounts (approximately 207 million)
• 2-3% are misclassified or undesirable accounts (up to 60 million)
• These numbers represent a 1% increase from previous estimates

The company discovered these numbers using a new methodology that improves data signal analysis, particularly for duplicate accounts. The surge in fake users has been notably observed in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.

Mark Zuckerberg has committed to investing in additional security measures to combat this issue, acknowledging that these investments will impact profitability. "We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. I am dead serious about this," stated Zuckerberg.

This revelation has attracted attention from U.S. lawmakers, particularly in light of concerns about Russian-backed advertisements on the platform. Democratic senators are now pressing Facebook to identify and notify users who were exposed to these ads.

The implications for advertisers are significant, as these findings affect campaign reach estimates and overall advertising effectiveness on the platform. Facebook is working to improve its advertising tools' accuracy to account for these non-legitimate accounts.

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