The role of new media

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Facebook removed 2.2 billion fake accounts from its platform during the first quarter of the year — nearly double the number it took action on in the prior quarter. The company says the increase is due to an uptick in automated attacks that create many accounts at once.

It’s a huge jump. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Facebook took down 1.2 billion fake accounts, and the quarter before, 750,000. During the first quarter of 2018, Facebook took down fewer than 600,000 fake accounts.
The company emphasized that most of the fake accounts it’s addressing have been taken down within minutes of being created, and those accounts therefore aren’t included in the metrics it reports, such as monthly active users. It claims that it flags 99.8 percent of fake accounts on its own, before they’re reported.

Facebook said the amount of accounts it took action on this quarter increased because of “automated attacks by bad actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at one time.” But it admitted that because so many automated accounts are being created, more are inevitably making it past their detection.

Facebook’s fake accounts problems seems bad - Vox