Facebook says it disabled 1.3 billion fake accounts in Oct–Dec last year

Facebook Inc. said on Monday it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December and that it had over 35,000 people working on tackling misinformation on its platform.

The company also removed more than 12 million pieces of content about COVID-19 and vaccines that global health experts flagged as misinformation, it said in a blog post.

False claims and conspiracies about the coronavirus vaccines have proliferated on social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter during the pandemic.

Facebook's disclosure of data on misinformation comes ahead of an inspection by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce into how technology platforms including Facebook are tackling misinformation.

Before this period, Facebook in September last year removed a network of fake accounts and pages allegedly linked to the Philippine military and police due to coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), a violation of its community standards.  — Reuters