Facebook Has Removed Half A Billion Fake Accounts So Far This Year

After publishing its internal community enforcement guidelines last month, the world’s largest social network today revealed the extent to which its enforcement guidelines are really stretched. The company will break down its enforcement efforts in a new report which will be published quarterly. The efforts are sorted into six main categories which include adult nudity and sexual activity, graphic violence, terrorist propaganda, hate speech, and fake accounts. Facebook has revealed that more than half a billion fake accounts have been removed so far this year.

The quarterly report will also mention how much of the content against the guidelines was seen by its users and how much of it was removed upon reporting and how much was removed even before a user reported the content that violates its guidelines.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, spam and fake accounts are at the top of the list and in the first quarter of this year alone, Facebook has removed 837 million spam pieces and 583 million fake accounts from the social network.

The company also enforced its guidelines on 21 million pieces of nudity and sexual activity, 1.9 million pieces of terrorist propaganda, 2.5 million hate speech examples, and 3.5 million posts with violent content. Facebook’s automated systems spotted almost 100 percent of spam and terrorist propaganda while 99 percent of fake accounts were also spotted by them.

“We believe that increased transparency tends to lead to increased accountability and responsibility over time, and publishing this information will push us to improve more quickly too,” wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook’s VP of product management.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook