583 Million Fake Accounts Shut Down By Facebook- Report

Social Media giant Facebook has reportedly taken down 583 million fake accounts in just the first three months of 2018.

Facebook on Tuesday, explained how it planned to enforce its “community standards” against sexual or violent images, terrorist propaganda or hate speech.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has been facing more calls for transparency in its dealings and it has stated that there have been massive efforts to not only shut down fake accounts, but also to prevent fake accounts from being created in the first place.

Unfortunately, Facebook still reports that fake accounts and profiles make up 3-4 percent of all active accounts.

Facebook has also explained it’s ongoing war against sexually explicit content, violent images and terrorist propaganda, stating that nearly 30 million posts containing one of these had been issued a warning.

Improved technology using artificial intelligence had helped it act on 3.4 million posts containing graphic violence, nearly three times more than it had in the last quarter of 2017.

In 85.6 percent of the cases, Facebook detected the images before being alerted to them by users, said the report, issued the day after the company said about 200 apps had been suspended on its platform as part of an investigation into misuse of private user data.

What this amounts to is that around 0.22 and 0.27 percent of the total content viewed by Facebook’s more than two billion users from January through March.

“In other words, of every 10,000 content views, an estimate of 22 to 27 contained graphic violence,” the report said.

“Responses to rule violations include removing content, adding warnings to content that may be disturbing to some users while not violating Facebook standards; and notifying law enforcement in case of a “specific, imminent and credible threat to human life.

“Improved IT also helped Facebook take action against 1.9 million posts containing terrorist propaganda, a 73 percent increase. Nearly all were dealt with before any alert was raised,” the company said.