Facebook Has Removed 1.5 Billion Fake Users in Last Six Months!

The social networking giant has released some astonishing details in its recent report.

That’s more than half the users of Facebook removed. 

(Photo: iStock)

Facebook is in all sorts of trouble. First came the staggering New York Times expose, which talks about the social networking giant hiring a firm to dig dirt on its opponents. And now it has dug its own grave by opting to go transparent with its process, possibly at the worst time.

Mark Zuckerberg has claimed every now and then about his platform taking care of bots and fake users, but you’ll be astonished to hear the number of such users that were loitering around on Facebook for a long time.

This year itself, Facebook claims to have removed over 1.5 billion fake accounts from its network and deleted 2.1 billion pieces of spam between April and September. These figures were shared in its Community Standards Report.

For a platform which caters to over 2 billion users across the globe, it doesn’t bode well that over 1.5 billion of those turned out to fake. This clearly tells you the state of affairs over there, with communal disharmony becoming one of the many concerns raised by Facebook over the past year or so.

We estimate that fake accounts represented approximately 3% to 4% of monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook during Q2 2018 and Q3 2018.

<a href="https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement#fake-accounts">Facebook Community Standard Report</a>

Facebook has cited reasons for the large number of fake accounts but its so-called effective detection system is likely to be scrutinized with the latest details coming out in the public.

Bad actors try to create fake accounts in large volumes automatically using scripts or bots, with the intent of spreading spam or conducting illicit activities such as scams. The numbers can also be affected by internal factors, including the effectiveness of our detection technology.

<a href="https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement#fake-accounts">Facebook Community Standard Report</a>

In Q2 2018, Facebook disabled 800 million fake accounts, up from 583 million in Q1 2018. In Q3 2018, it disabled over 754 million fake accounts, which it boasts of being a modest decrease from the previous quarter.

All this controversy seems to have forced Facebook investors to jump in, needing to make a call on Zuckerberg’s autonomous power at the company. Jonas Kron, Senior Vice President at Trillium Asset Management, which owns a substantial stake in Facebook, "called on Zuckerberg to step down as board chairman in the wake of the report".

"Facebook is behaving like it's a special snowflake. It's not. It is a company and companies need to have a separation of chair and CEO," Kron was quoted saying in The Guardian report.

It’s hard to believe that neither Zuckerberg or his wing commander at the helm, Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, had no clue about the stuff happening at their company. All this has to end at some point.

(With inputs from IANS)