Facebook Disables Millions Of Fake Accounts

The days of Facebook being the 'wild, wild, west' of social media have come to an end. In the beginning, all you had to worry about was 'friending' someone who wasn't real or was pretending to be someone local. But that changed with the last election cycle. Fake accounts spreading misinformation put Facebook in the hot seat. So what changes are being made?

I can tell you I still get friend requests from accounts that I know don't truly represent their source. It's fine. I'm smart enough to figure out if you're a 'real' person or not. On Tuesday, Facebook revealed that in the first three months of this year, they've removed over half a billion accounts. You can view those statistics in one of two ways. Either, way to go Facebook, or wow, this problem is much larger than anyone thought. Along with the half-billion accounts that have been deleted, Facebook also removed 21 million pieces of content featuring sex or nudity, 2.5 million items related to hate speech, and just over 2 million items involving terrorism.

This is the first internal look that Facebook has revealed in its battle against false sources and malicious accounts. It's a battle that is just getting started.

[via Washington Post]