This theory came after I got added by a profile with all the telltale signs of being fake. But, the mysterious stranger behind the profile who was clacking away at the keyboard having a conversation with me disagreed.
- The oldest profile picture on her profile was from August 22 2020. There were no older pictures anywhere to be found
- Most of the commenters on her statuses and photos were random men from all over the world
- She doesn't have much interaction on her posts either than what's described in point 2
Overall, this is a fake account for me. But, I really had no proof. Every single photo she uploaded failed the reverse search test. I couldn't know for sure whether she opened her account in the last two weeks either.
And this is where this question started.
"How do I find the date a profile was created?"
While searching online and looking at Quora, I found an interesting comment explaining how someone found that depending on people's profile ID's (Found by going to the profile in question, visiting the page source code, typing in "PageID" in the search bar, and finding a result with a number like �' (That's me, say hi)), it can be seen what general moment in time their account was created.
I thought it was an interesting theory. I decided to pursue it.
I started by looking at a few of the very first Facebook accounts ever made. Mark's (ID# 4), Chris Hughes (ID# 5), Dustin Moskovitz (ID# 6)… You get the idea. The profile numbers go up per each account made.
I thought this random comment I found on the internet showed promise, and I needed to look into this further. I took my own profile ID, and compared it to the profile ID of my older account that I don't use anymore.
100002839584156 <- My profile ID 100000490435612 <- The profile ID of an account I created before the one above
Just like how "OEM" car license plates are similar to cars that were bought at around the same time (Or how more modern cars have letters closer to the end of the alphabet, while older cars use letters closer to the start), my preliminary testing between my two accounts showed somewhat the same results.
My more modern account used up more characters (and more zeroes) than my older account.
At this point, I thought I was really onto something. What does any person who thinks he's onto something do? He creates a control, of course.
In my case, it was a new Facebook account, fresh out of the assembly line and licensed — today.
100054717170363 <- Profile I created today 100002839584156 <- My profile ID 100000490435612 <- The profile ID of an older account
I was definitely onto something. The next obvious train of thought was:
If the profile IDs go +1 for every new account, and if I can find out how many accounts are created per day, I can convert the profile IDs to date values.
I needed to find a way to make this conversion.
After spending some time figuring out how to find the exact date my older profile was created, including being surprised at what e-mail was used for that same older account (and doing a password reset), I came out with one much needed date to help me figure out this mystery:
November 24 2009
Did you know that in 2009, the most popular names, ranked, were:
Boys: Jacob Ethan Michael Alexander William Joshua Daniel
Girls: Emma Olivia Sophia Ava Emily Madison Abigail
Either than Jacob and Ethan, who may or may not fit in the following statement, but would more likely be on the outskirts, these kids are going to love school! They'll probably have everything I didn't; Friends, popularity, a social life in general.
I did have one crowning achievement to look back to when thinking of highschool though: I got the druggies crouching around a graphing calculator that I gave them, playing with it, backs to the lockers looking real excited for a good 5 minutes. The misalignment of stereotypes was absolutely hilarious.
November 24 2009
Knowing the date of my older profile, I figured out how many days was between this profile, and the one I had just created. 3936.
All that was left was simply to get the difference between the two profile IDs, and divide it by number of days to get how many Facebook profiles were created per day.
September 3rd 2020 100054717170363 <- Profile I created today
November 24 2009 100000490435612 <- The profile ID of an older account
100054717170363–100000490435612=54226734751
Then I just divided 54226734751 by the number of days between those two profiles, and got to 13,777,117.5688516
Knowing how many profiles were created per day, I can simply find the difference between profile IDs of a profile created today, and the one I'm researching, and simply divide that number by how many profiles are created per day to get the "How many days was this profile alive for" variable.
Here is what happened when I tested it with my current profile:
I took the profile ID of the account I created today, and subtracted the profile ID of my personal profile.
100054717170363–100002839584156 =51877586207
I then divided the resulting number by the value of "profiles created per day", and came out with:
3765.
A quick Google Search later, and I found out that date 3765 days ago was May 14th 2010.
Sadly my account was created on August 31st 2011. I was a year off, but at least I got a date from it.
I tried it with a friend's profile ID, and came up with a date 3 months before the date he created his account on. Presumably, the accounts created per day variable was simply more accurate for an account closer to the date my old account was created, which I based this calculation off of. As a sidenote, 13.7M new accounts created per day doesn't quite sound right. Nonetheless, this variable did bring me a close answer to a profile created close to the creation date of my older Facebook account, which this variable was based off of, so I won't question it.
This is where I'm at. The next step would be to solve for the differences in Facebook account sign ups between months and years, from the start of Facebook, to the present day. I believe it's not too far fetched to think that if the "new users per day" variable could be closer to reality, this calculation would be more precise. Hence, you might actually be able to figure out what date a majority of Facebook profiles were created on.
But I personally do not know how to do this.
Do you?