Facebook estimates that 5% of its active accounts are fake

They serve to create trends, circulate misinformation or "false news" and constitute a modern scourge. Fake accounts are one of the serious problems of Facebook and other social networks. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg calculates that approximately 5% of your active accounts remain "fake".

The American company has detected and blocked, before their activation, 1,200 million accounts in the last quarter of 2018 and 2,200 million in the first quarter of 2019, according to figures released this Thursday.

"The number of accounts we are taking action on has increased due to automated attacks from malicious players who are trying to create large accounts at the same time," reported Facebook.

These numbers correspond to accounts that the social network says to delete immediately and that, therefore, are not counted among its active users. As they explained, it is quite easy to identify and eliminate users before they generate "damage".

However, the social network estimates that 5% of active accounts currently on the platform are "fake", out of a total of 2,400 million active users per month.

Unauthorized content

The "false" accounts can be used, for example, for circulate misinformation campaigns for political manipulative purposes, one of the most criticized issues in the last two years with regard to the social network, with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The group regularly announces transactions to eliminate active accounts that are considered "non-genuine".

On Thursday, he released a report detailing the measures taken against "false" accounts, but also against content that violates its rules of use on nudity, violence, bad, harbadment and the promotion of drugs or weapons, the excuses of terrorism.