San Francisco (AFP)
Facebook is trying to respond to the sharp increase in attempts to automatically create accounts for malicious purposes but estimates that about 5% of active accounts currently remain "false", according to figures released Thursday.
The group has deactivated immediately, that is to say before they become active, 1.2 billion accounts in the last quarter of 2018 and 2.2 billion in the first three months of 2019, "an increase due to the attacks Automated malicious actors (seeking to) create large volumes of accounts at the same time, "says the US company.
In this case, Facebook claims to delete them immediately: they are not counted in the active accounts. According to Facebook, these accounts are quite easy to spot and therefore delete before they create "wrong".
The social network nevertheless estimates that 5% of active accounts currently on the platform are "false" out of a total of 2.4 billion active monthly users.
For example, "fake" accounts can be used to relay misinformation campaigns for political manipulation, one of the topics that has plagued Facebook for two years. The group regularly announces waves of deletions of active accounts deemed "unauthentic".
The group released a report Thursday detailing the measures taken by Facebook against "false" accounts but also content that violates its rules of use, such as nudity, violence, sex, harassment, the promotion of drugs. or weapons, apology for terrorism, etc.
? 2019 AFP