Facebook removed more than 3 billion fake accounts over a six-month span, far outpacing previous efforts by the company in striking fraudulent accounts from the platform, the tech giant said Thursday.
The company revealed in a new report the majority of the accounts were identified “within minutes” and before they were active.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company removed the 3.3 billion accounts between October and March. In the previous six-month period, between April 2018 and September 2018, Facebook kicked 1.5 billion off the platform.
In its report, Facebook said its seen a “steep increase in the creation of abusive, fake accounts” on the site over the last six months. Though the company has been swift in catching most of the accounts, “automated attacks” have led to more evading initial detection. Fake accounts made up roughly 5% of Facebook’s 2.3 billion monthly active users, the company said.
Since it was discovered that Russian actors used Facebook and other social media platforms to spread misinformation and sow division among U.S. voters in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election, the company, under CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has faced increased scrutiny to improve transparency among its users.
Facebook has also come under fire for its handling of users’ private data and the proliferation of violent, extremist, and hateful content on the platform.
The company said in its transparency report that between October and March, it removed 7.3 million hate-speech posts, 11.1 million pieces of terrorist propaganda, and 52.3 million posts that were violent or graphic.
Facebook reported an increase in the content it acted on because of its use of artificial intelligence tools that detect and either remove or cover content with a warning to users.
Facebook’s efforts to address the spread of harmful or false content on the site comes as the company is preparing for a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission stemming from its mishandling of user information.
U.S. lawmakers have also grappled with how to address Facebook and have urged the company to ramp up its policing of content on the site.
