This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just don't know how many fake or synthetic Astroturfed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing accounts are really out there. I have a close friend that ran a consumer oriented search site with 50 million monthly active users and he showed me that if certain sites, not his, did not make it easy for fake accounts to be auto generated from various advertising groups and spammers, then they just would not get the bloated monthly active user numbers they wanted.

Ironically, Google the term "buy facebook accounts". This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space. 50% or more of the social networking profiles out there could be fake given bots, systems and marketplaces that auto generate this stuff in mass amounts to spam and siphon ad dollars.

Another way to look at this is based on how and why virus makers target PCs along with how many PCs are currently affected.

Not many fake 'searches' are happening compared to fake bots and social networking profiles. Yet another reason why Google makes $70 billion per year.