Facebook Has Deleted 5.4 Billion Fake Accounts This Year
In its latest transparency report, Facebook said, “We have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts. We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems”.
Facebook has removed around 5.4 billion fake accounts this year, in its persistent battle against misinformation and manipulation. Facebook also said it has stepped up its defense system and now has the capability to remove the accounts within minutes of being created, amidst growing efforts to create fake accounts.
In its latest transparency report, the world’s largest social networking platform said, “We have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts. We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems”.
Facebook also said that it believes that fake accounts, where someone fake pretends to be a person or organisation do not really exist but they form nearly five percent of its active users worldwide.
Recently the social networking platform has invested heavily to find out and remove accounts, which are mainly crafted to deceive people. The organisation is successful in finding out from where the information is originating, particularly when some information spreads as part of coordinated campaigns with political or social agendas.
Facebook also assures, “that is why we continue to invest in systems that enable us to improve our accuracy in removing content that violates our policies while safeguarding content that discusses or condemns hate speech”.
The detailed report released by Facebook also showed how the government demands for user information in countries across the world led by the US. In the first half of this year total government request for the user rose up to 16 % to 128,617. The report said, “Of the total volume, the US continues to submit the largest number of requests, followed by India, the UK, Germany and France”.
Facebook also said it has received 50,741 requests from the US government for the information regarding 82,461 user accounts, with two-thirds of the process is done in a way that prohibits the social network from letting users know about the inquiries, the report said.
Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonder said in an online post about the figures, “We always scrutinize every government request we receive for account data to make sure it is legally valid. This is true no matter which government makes the request”.
Facebook for the first time in its detailed transparency report also included photo and video centric social network Instagram. At the same time the largest social network also highlighted its progress in tackling terror, suicide, hate, child porn and drug related posts.