A few weeks ago Facebook announced that they would be changing the way Facebook likes are counted. Basically, the update makes it so that inactive accounts, that is accounts that have been voluntarily deactivated or memorialized accounts (deceased Facebook users), will no longer count towards the total number of likes for Facebook pages.

Facebook claims that dropping these inactive users from the Facebook like count will make the numbers more accurate, which does make some sense.

It looks like these changes went into effect sometime last week, as I’ve noticed a loss in followers (~300 total) from my own Facebook page as well as drops in some of the other pages that I follow:

Facebook has made a number of pushes to remove spam accounts and inactive accounts in the past, but this is the first time that I have actually seen a drop on my own page, which was a little shocking when I first noticed it, even though I understand that the new number is more accurate.

Hopefully these users have just deactivated their Facebook accounts, and haven’t actually passed away. It’s weird to think that some of my fans may have dies since I started my page, although given my number of fans, it’s statistically likely.