Facebook has revealed that it has down over 5.4 billion fake accounts on its platform this year, in its bid to combat the spread of fake news.
The social media giant who made this known last week Wednesday, said that the figure represented about 5% of its worldwide active users during the second and third quarters of the year.
Fake accounts are usually created by people pretending to be something or someone that doesn't exist. These fake accounts can be made to look exactly like that of a real person or organisation that is being impersonated, these includes made up names or real names of individuals, celebrities, pets or organisations.
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These accounts are used for the spread of fake information to deceive the public or create panic, mostly through coordinated campaigns with political or social agendas. However, Facebook isn't relenting as they too keep improving their defense systems.
"We have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts," the social giant revealed in its latest transparency report.
"We can estimate that everyday, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems."
Facebook also revealed in its transparency report, for the first time, included Instagram as it highlighted progress it has achieved tackling suicide, terror, child p0rn, hate and drug related posts.
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"While we are pleased with this progress, these technologies are not perfect and we know that mistakes can still happen," Facebook said.
"That's why we continue to invest in systems that enable us to improve our accuracy in removing content that violates our policies while safeguarding content that discusses or condemns hate speech."
Coming to users data, Facebook said that the demand for users information had increase with the US taking the high lead.
"Of the total volume, the US continues to submit the largest number of request, followed by India, the UK, Germany and France," the report said.
The Internet firm revealed that demand for users data saw a 16% increase as it increased to 128,617 in the first half of 2019.
Facebook said that it received a whopping 50,741 from the US demanding information for some 82,461 accounts, with roughly two-thirds of the request done in a way that prevents the social giant from letting the users now about the inquiries.