Facebook takes down billions of fake accounts & abusive posts

Social networking platform Facebook has reportedly suspended over 3.2 billion fake accounts within a 5-month span, between April to September 2019. Additionally, as per content moderation reports, millions of posts with abusive content including suicide and child abuse.

These removals nearly double the number of fake accounts suspended during the same time period last year, with over 1.5 billion accounts taken down in 2018.

Facebook has also, for the first time, revealed the number of posts removed from photo-sharing platform Instagram. The platform has posed significant concerns to disinformation researchers, regarding fake news circulation.

In the fourth content moderation report, Facebook revealed that the persistent detection of violating content was considerably lower on Instagram than the flagship Facebook app. Incidentally, this is the platform where a majority of the company’s detection tools were initially utilized.

For instance, Facebook claimed that it proactively identified and removed terrorist organization-affiliated content over 92.2% of the time on Instagram and 98.5% of the time on Facebook.

Over 11.6 million posts showing sexual exploitation of children and child nudity were removed from Facebook in the third quarter of 2019. Over 754,000 of similar content was removed from Instagram during the same time period.

Facebook’s future plans to offer end-to-end encryption for better user privacy are causing significant concern to law enforcement authorities. They believe that this encryption of the messaging service will create roadblocks in the fight against child abuse.

In fact, Christopher Wray, FBI Director has apparently stated that these modifications would be a dream come true for child pornographers and predators on the platform.

The content moderation report also revealed, for the first time, Facebook’s data on the actions taken against self-harm associated content. Facebook claimed that it had taken down over 2.5 million pieces of content depicting self-harm or suicide, in the third quarter of the year.

According to company reports, Facebook has also removed over 4.4 million posts depicting drug sales-related content over the same period.

Source Credit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-enforcement/facebook-removes-32-billion-fake-accounts-millions-of-child-abuse-posts-idUSKBN1XN2B2