Facebook Removed A Staggering 3 Billion Fake Accounts From The Platform In Last Six Months

Facebook removed more than 3 billion fake accounts from October to March, twice as many as previous six months, company said Thursday. 

Nearly all of m were caught before y h a chance to become “active” users of social network. 

In a new report, Facebook said it saw a “steep increase” in creation of abusive, fake accounts. While most of se fake accounts were blocked “within minutes” of ir creation, use of computers to generate millions of accounts at a time meant t only that Facebook caught more of fake accounts, but that more of m slipped through. 

As a result, company estimates that 5% of its 2.4 billion monthly active users are fake accounts, or about 119 million. This is up from an estimated 3% to 4% in  previous six-monthreport. 

increase shows challenges Facebook faces in removing accounts created by computers to spre spam, fake news and or objectionable material. Even as Facebook’s detection tools get better, so do efforts by creators of se fake accounts. 

new numbers come as company grapples with challenge after challenge, ranging from fake news to Facebook’s role in elections interference, hate speech and incitement to violence in US, Myanmar, India and elsewhere. 

Facebook also said Thursday that it removed 7.3 million posts, photos and or material because it violated its rules against hate speech. That’s up from 5.4 million in prior six months. 

company said it found more than 65% of hate speech on its own, before people reported it, during first three months of 2019. That’s an improvement from 52% in third quarter of 2018. 

Facebook is under growing pressure to combat hate on its platform, as material continues to slip through even with recent bans of popular extremist figures such as Alex Jones and Louis Farrakhan. 

Facebook employs thousands of people to review posts, photos, comments and videos for violations. Some things are also detected without humans, using artificial intelligence. Both humans and AI make mistakes and Facebook has been accused of political bias as well as ham-fisted removals of posts discussing  rar than promoting  racism. 

A thorny issue for Facebook is its lack of procedures for aunticating identities of those setting up accounts. Only in instances where a user has been booted off service and won an appeal to be reinstated does it ask to see ID documents. 

While some have argued for stricter auntication on social media services, issue is thorny. People including UN free expression rapporteur David Kaye say it’s important to allow pseudonymous speech online for human rights activists and ors whose lives could orwise be endangered. 

Dipayan Ghosh, a former Facebook employee and White House tech policy viser who is currently a Harvard fellow, said absent greater transparency from Facebook re is way of kwing wher its improved automated detection is doing a better job of containing disinformation problem. 

“We lack public transparency into scale of disinformation operations on Facebook in first place,” he said. 

And even if just 5 million accounts escaped through cracks, Ghosh ded, how much hate speech and disinformation are y spreing through bots “that subvert democratic process by injecting chaos into our political discourse?” 

“ only way to dress this problem in long term is for government to intervene and compel transparency into se platform operations and privacy for end consumer,” he said. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called for government regulation to decide what should be considered harmful content and on or issues. But at least in US, government regulation of speech could run into First Amendment hurdles. 

And what regulation might look like and wher companies, lawmakers, privacy and free speech vocates and ors will agree on what it should look like is t clear. 

Of 3.4 billion accounts removed in six-month period, 1.2 billion came during fourth quarter of 2018 and 2.2 billion during first quarter of this year. More than 99 percent of se were disabled before someone reported m to company. In April-September period last year, Facebook blocked 1.5 billion accounts. 

Facebook attributed spike in removed accounts to “automated attacks by b actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at one time.” company declined to say where se attacks originated, only that y were from different parts of world. 

Starting with this report, Facebook is disclosing how it deals with sale of “regulated goods” that is, drugs and firearms. Facebook prohibits purchase, sale or gifting of firearms, as well as drugs including marijuana, which is legal in some states and countries. company said it “took action” on 1.5 million cases involving drugs and 1.4 million involving firearms. This generally means removing material from Facebook but can also involve suspending users or ding warning screens to videos showing objectionable content. 

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