Facebook removed nearly 3 billion bogus accounts in last 6 Months

by Madhvi Bansal
Facebook

The Social media giant Facebook has recently published its Community Standards Enforcement Report. The report provides the details of the last quarter  (Q4) of 2018 and the first quarter (Q1) of 2019. Facebook has removed a whopping 3.39 billion fake accounts during the six-month period from October 2018 till March 2019. The number is twice the number of fraudulent accounts deleted in the previous six-month period. 

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Facebook has attributed the rise in the number of fake accounts to automated attacks by bad actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at once. Nearly all of the new account were caught before they had a chance to become “active” users of the social network.

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Main takeaways from the report are:

  • Facebook estimates about 5 per cent of its monthly active users are fake.
  • While acknowledging, Facebook said it remains “confident” that most of the activity and people on its platform are genuine.
  • The report also provides information about the volume of posts Facebook took action against for attempting to sell products that are not allowed on its platforms, such as drugs and firearms.
  • The company has also starting the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and remove guns and drugs related posts from its platform. 
  •  Also, the company reversed itself 152,000 times out of the 1.1 million appeals it heard related to hate speech, the report added.
  • Apart from this, company took action on nearly 1.4 million content which tried to sell guns and around 1.5 million content that tried to sell drugs. 

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Earlier Announcement on Live Video Service

Earlier in month of May. Facebook had announced that it would place more restrictions on the use of its live video service. The company stated that anyone who breaks rules in broadcasting content on Facebook Live will be temporarily barred from using the service. This move came in wake of the Christchurch shooting where an Australian citizen had broadcast the attack live on Facebook and 51 people were killed.