From January through March of this year, Facebook deleted about 2.2 billion fake accounts from the platform. That’s twice the normal number of accounts they delete in a three-month span. Facebook released this data in a recent blog post.
What are these fake accounts even used for?
Facebook VP of Analytics Alex Schultz wrote about the prevalence of the fake accounts.
“The number for fake accounts actioned is very skewed by simplistic attacks, which don’t represent real harm or even a real risk of harm,” Schultz writes. “If an unsophisticated, bad actor tries to mount an attack and create 100 million fake accounts — and we remove them as soon as they are created — that’s 100 million fake accounts actioned. But no one is exposed to these accounts and, hence, we haven’t prevented any harm to our users. Because we remove these accounts so quickly, they are never considered active and we don’t count them as monthly active users.”
The vast majority of the deleted accounts were ones for boosting likes. The idea is that if your page has a high amount of likes, they are more believable and influential.
However, the problems with fake accounts are much more serious than Schultz would have us believe. There were still about 18 million fake accounts that violated policy for toxic behavior that Facebook deleted after an appeal. The violations include:
- Spam
- Adult nudity/sexual activity
- Hate speech
- Bullying/harassment
- Violent/graphic content
- Inappropriate use of drugs
- Inappropriate use of firearms
- Terrorist propaganda
- Child pornography
Counting those that were appealed, Facebook deleted about 4 million posts that promoted hate speech.
Facebook determined that for every 10,000 views, 25 of those views saw violent/graphic material. Also, 11-14 views saw sexual content or adult nudity.
For a better understanding where those numbers come from, check out chart from Facebook:
What’s the significance of this?
Although Schultz claims that the fake accounts were used to boost likes for “bad actors,” more specifically, these fake likes are also used to boost influence for politicians.
Last year, Facebook deleted 32 accounts across Instagram and Facebook that used fake accounts to boost likes. These accounts were used to help politically influence Facebook users during midterm elections.
That was 32 accounts, but with today’s news of 2.2 billion deleted accounts, we can actually see just how prevalent this was.
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Read Now ►Facebook is technically doing better at detecting harassment and fake accounts
Facebook wrote in the same blog post that about 95% of the fake accounts they found were discovered proactively. This means that they were deleted before they could cause any sort of harm.
When it comes to deleting users and pages that promote hate speech, Facebook now detects 65% of the problematic pages. That number is up from an abysmal 24%. For a better idea of how it has improved, check out this infographic from Facebook.
Facebook is also doing a better job of detecting accounts that are inappropriately posting about drugs and firearms. However, here the difference is less significant.
How does this affect you?
If you are being harassed on Facebook, the social media platform has plenty of tools to help you.
However, the cause for the concern comes from the fake accounts used to boost a page’s influence. The number of likes a page has should not dictate how they influence you.
If you are looking at an influencer’s Facebook page, you should judge them from their actions and not from their like count.
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