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Facebook Deleted Billions of Accounts in Just Three Months

A recent report has revealed that Facebook took down 2.2 billion fake accounts between January and March of 2019.

This figure represents a record high for the social network, which currently has 2.38 billion active monthly users.

For comparison to this most recent figure, Facebook disabled 1.2 billion fake accounts last quarter, and 694 million from October to December of 2017. The social network’s third Community Standards Enforcement report revealed the new numbers, and has stated that it will release these reports quarterly going forward. The Community Standards Enforcement report previously came out only twice a year, and excluded Instagram, which it will include in all reports going forward.

The scare over fake accounts is a serious one for Facebook, as users are never fond of spam. Spamming in order to sell products without going through Facebook’s ad system is one problem, but scandals over misinformation have added fuel to the fire. “The health of the discourse is just as important as any financial reporting we do, so we should do it just as frequently,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reporters over the phone last Thursday.

Facebook’s Vice President of Analytics Alex Schultz explained that the serious uptick in fake accounts comes from “simplistic attacks,” which don’t carry any risk of harm according to Schultz. This sometimes happens when one bad actor makes upwards of 100 million accounts, which are almost always taken down immediately. Most users have likely never been exposed to one of these fake accounts.

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