Facebook Removed More Than 1 Billion Accounts In 90 Days
Leaders from Facebook are about to go in front a the United States House of Representatives for a hearing this week. The company, along with other large tech firms, are being called in front of Congress to discuss the spread of misinformation on their platforms. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will testify. The hearing is set for Thursday, March 25th.
This could be another step towards larger government oversight for tech companies and the content they host on their platforms.
Just ahead of the testimony, Facebook made a big announcement that they have banned more than 1.3 billion accounts. These bans came between October and December of last year. The company released this information as part of a bigger release they posted on Tuesday. In that release, Facebook describes the accounts as fake accounts:
"Let’s start with fake accounts. We take a hard line against this activity and block millions of fake accounts each day, most of them at the time of creation. Between October and December of 2020, we disabled more than 1.3 billion of them. We also investigate and take down covert foreign and domestic influence operations that rely on fake accounts."
In addition to removing those accounts, Facebook announced that they have more than 35,000 people working to uncover fake accounts, misinformation, and clickbait. This includes a global network of 80 independent fact checkers who work in more than 60 different languages.
In addition to the human component, Facebook has unleased an Artificial Intelligence program to help reduce misinformation by working to reduce the monetary gain posts, individuals, and groups gain from Facebook.
But even with all of this, it's unclear if the Government will be satisfied.