Facebook reported a sharp increase in fake accounts on the social network in the first quarter of 2019 and last quarter of 2018, according Telecompaper. In its latest report on standards enforcement, the company said automated, scripted attacks have resulted in more of these accounts making it past initial detection. It estimates in total around 5 percent of its monthly active users were fake accounts.
The number of such accounts removed from the site rose sharply in the past year, from around half a billion in Q1 2018 to over 1 billion in Q4 2018 and over 2 billion in Q1 2019. Facebook said the majority of these accounts were caught "within minutes of registration", before they became a part of the monthly active user (MAU) population.
Alex Schultz, VP of Analytics at Facebook, said the company is "confident that the vast majority of people and activity on Facebook are genuine". However, in a blog post on how the company measures fake accounts, he said the company was looking at whether there is a better way to report on the fake accounts.
It also "recommends" focusing more on the enforcement report statistics on how it's dealing with actual content violations. The community standards report covers a wide range of such violations, from hate speech to terrorist propaganda and child pornography. The latest report also adds data on regulated goods, such as removing ads for firearms or drugs on Facebook, and data on appeals against Facebook's enforcement of the community standards, when users think their content has been taken down inappropriately.
