Facebook scrubs 1.3 billion fake accounts

In a recent blog post, Facebook said that the organisation had deleted 1.3 billion fake accounts from October to December last year through which about 35,000 people were spreading misleading information.

“Misinformation can also be posted by people, even in good faith. To address this challenge, we’ve built a global network of more than 80 independent fact-checkers, who review content in more than 60 languages. When they rate something as false, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it and add a warning label with more information for anyone who sees it. We know that when a warning screen is placed on a post, 95% of the time people don’t click to view it. We also notify the person who posted it and we reduce the distribution of Pages, Groups, and domains who repeatedly share misinformation. For the most serious kinds of misinformation, such as false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines and content that is intended to suppress voting, we will remove the content,” reads the statement.

According to Facebook, the company has also deleted 12 million coronavirus and vaccine-related content that global health experts flagged as misinformation.

It is believed that false claims about the coronavirus and the vaccine have adorned social media platforms, while YouTube in the last five months had already deleted 3,000 videos that were spreading misleading information about the COVID-19 vaccine.