Facebook purge 583 million fake accounts in the first three months of 2018, demonstrating the amount of spam, violent content and hate speech that gets smeared across the social network.
In its first quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report, Facebook said the overwhelming majority of moderation action was against spam posts and fake accounts: it took action on 837m pieces of spam, and shut down a further 583m fake accounts on the site in the three months.
This digital spring clean mostly saw Facebook strip spam posts and fake accounts from its social network. But its also had its moderators tackle 2.5 million incidences of hate speech and 1.9 million pieces of content that related to terrorist propaganda.
But Facebook also moderated 2.5m pieces of hate speech, 1.9m pieces of terrorist propaganda, 3.4m pieces of graphic violence and 21m pieces of content featuring adult nudity and sexual activity.
The amount of content moderated by Facebook is influenced by both the company’s ability to find and act on infringing material, and the sheer quantity of items posted by users.
