In 11 months, Facebook has shut down 5.4 billion fake accounts on its main platform. But even after this massive haul, Facebook says there are still millions of fake profiles running on Facebook.
In 2018 alone, Facebook removed 3.3 billion fake accounts on its platform.
Facebook said as much as 5 percent of its monthly user base of nearly 2.5 billion consists of fake accounts.
Despite the advances in technology, there are still a lot of fake accounts that are being created on social media.
The latest removal on their platform is being done as the tech giant is preparing for the main elections in the United States and the 2020 US Census.
Analysts and watchdogs are bracing for a wave of fake and misleading content on social media, following the revelations about the election meddling that happened in the 2016 elections.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, and owner of Facebook said the removal of fake accounts shows that the company is taking the issue about fake users seriously.
Mark said, “Because our numbers are high doesn’t mean there’s that much more harmful content. It just means we’re working harder to identify this content and that’s why it’s higher.”
From January to March this year, Facebook removed more than 2 billion fake accounts, which was listed as the highest.
From April to June, Facebook removed 1.5 billion accounts, and from July to September, Facebook removed nearly 1.7 billion fake accounts on its platform.
The latest announcement on Facebook comes as part of their latest Transparency Report.
The latest Transparency Report also showed data about Instagram.
From April to September, Facebook took down nearly 3 million pieces of content on Instagram that violated their policies against selling drugs.
The company also acted against another 95,000 pieces of Instagram content related to gun sales.
The data also showed the efforts made by Facebook against child exploitation, suicide, self-injury, and terrorist propaganda.
But the reporting on Instagram does not cover topics Facebook includes on its main platform, which includes hate speech and bullying.
An executive noted that the systems made by Facebook are being used by Instagram to find and detect content that is inappropriate.
In 2019, Facebook started their hate speech algorithm to begin automatically removing content on their platforms that violate their policies against discrimination.
From July to September, 7 million pieces of hate speech content were removed on their platform, which is nearly 60 percent more from the data that was gathered from April to June. Out of the 7 million, 80 percent was detected by Facebook before a user saw the content.