Facebook deletes billions of fake accounts
Facebook deleted around 2.2 billion fake accounts in the first quarter of this year alone. A large proportion of these were created by spammers who wanted to use the platform for dubious advertising, explained Facebook manager Guy Rosen.
They attempted to automatically create hundreds of thousands or even millions of fake accounts. Facebook did not provide any information on the extent to which the fake profiles were created for political influence, according to the online network's findings.
The number of fake accounts deleted by Facebook is rising continuously. In the final quarter of 2018, there were around 1.2 billion, compared to around 1.55 billion in the previous six months. The online network attributes the rapid increase to increased attempts to automatically create fake accounts on a large scale.
The figures reveal the extent of these actions: Facebook has a total of around 1.6 billion daily active users and around 2.4 billion access the service at least once a month. According to Facebook estimates, fake accounts make up around five percent of these. Facebook does not include accounts that are deleted immediately after registration in this figure.
In addition, Facebook also ensures that attempts to create fake profiles are unsuccessful, for example by blocking suspicious IP address blocks in good time. Overall, Facebook detects 99 percent of fake accounts before they are reported by users.
Since the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Facebook has faced accusations that it is not doing enough to prevent the spread of fake accounts - and is now relying heavily on learning software to filter them out.
Facebook provided the figures as part of a detailed report on compliance with its community standards. Among other things, it also revealed that users challenged the blocking of 1.1 million posts in the first quarter - and 155,000 posts were subsequently restored. (SDA)
