What is The Third Largest Country in The World?

  Earlier this year Facebook boasted about how it had hit the 1 billion user mark, making it the third largest country in the world (if it was a country).  There have been many news articles that discuss the idea about how 'healthy' this is for Facebook or society at large.
  This article discusses the fact that Facebook has over 80% of it's accounts being faked or shells.  These shells include businesses, repeat accounts (where a user has an account to fool employers, parents, and or friends), accounts that have been left alone because users forgot the passwords, accounts used to stalk exes, and over a fourth of these accounts were created by Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg.

  The existence of these shell accounts begs the question "what is a real user?"  Not to mention "how reliable is Facebook as an institution and how can we trust them now?"
  I am not qualified to answer these questions outside of my own opinions, but I can say Facebook seems to be a necessary part of life for most people.  I myself live in another part of the country where it is difficult to stay in touch with old friends and family members.  Facebook helps solve this problem.  I use it to find out information about businesses and public figures.  I use it when investigating news stories or when I am trying to contact sources.  I also know many employers use it to either evaluate future employees or keep tabs on current employees.
  The ethical questions raised by all of these uses will become more and more pressing as time goes on but for now we can say without a doubt that Facebook is like so many companies in the past that have inflated numbers to be looked at in a more positive light.  Bernie Madoff, Enron, and 'Crazy Eddie' were all guilty of the same taboo.  Why is it these people were put on trial, yet it is moral for Mark Zuckerberg to inflate his numbers using bots?  It's not, it is just Facebook is still a necessary part of life so we seem to overlook it's moral failings.



Image found at: gnuband.org
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Updated: Oct. 15, 2012

  Here is a related blogpost by Ken Burbary that has a more in depth analysis of Facebook demographics found on his blog called Web Business by Ken Burbary.