Facebook has closed over 580 million false accounts in early 2018

We expected Facebook to be the most popular social networking site in the world with over 2.2 billion active accounts to meet many false accounts, but the company revealed in its first transparency report that only 3-4% of these may be false. In the first three months of the year, the company blocked 583 million false accounts shortly after they were registered. Along with these news, the company also provided some interesting statistics about how content was moderated in the first quarter of 2018.

3 or 4% of all active Facebook users means that about 66 million fake accounts are still active, and Facebook constantly improves tools to detect and remove them from the platform. However, most of the fake accounts were detected using artificial intelligence algorithms, which caught suspicious actions just minutes after recording. By setting the number of 583 million in the context, in the first three months of 2018, an average of 6.5 million false accounts were recorded each day. In addition to the ones it has closed, Facebook blocks many other millions of accounts before they complete the sign-up process.

The AI ​​system has also started to be very effective in detecting spam. During the same period, Facebook blocked nearly 837 million "spam" posts and attached a warning or removed 30 million posts containing explicit violence, terrorist propaganda, or racist messages. In 85.6% of cases, Facebook boasts that it has removed unwanted content before it is reported by users.

Facebook has promised more transparency after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and this report is just the first such quarterly document that the company promises to publish from now on.