Facebook says it disabled more than 1.3 billion fake accounts between Oct-Dec 2020

Facebook on Monday said it had taken down more than 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December 2020. The company further said it had removed more than 100 networks of coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB) from Facebook.

Explaining Facebook’s efforts to tackle misinformation, VP Integrity Guy Rosen said that the company had built a global network of more than 80 independent fact-checkers who review content in more than 60 languages.

Rosen revealed that when fact-checkers flag content as false, Facebook reduces its distribution, essentially lowering its reach. It also adds a warning label with more contextual information on such content. He noted that 95% of the time people do not click to view the content when they see a warning label.

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Facebook also alerts the person who posted the content. The efforts to reduce the reach also include limiting the distribution of Pages, Groups, and domains that repeatedly share misinformation. False content that may have more serious implications, such as claims related to Covid-19 and vaccines, is taken down.

According to Rosen, Facebook has used its AI systems to take down 12 million pieces of false content on Covid-19 and vaccines.

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“But it’s not enough to just limit misinformation that people might see. We also connect people to reliable information from trusted experts. We do this through centralized hubs like our COVID-19 Information Center, Climate Science Information Center or US 2020 Voting Information Center, labels that we attach to certain posts with reliable information from experts, and notifications that we run in people’s feeds on both Facebook and Instagram,” he said in a post.

The overview of efforts has come ahead of a review by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce into how technology firms such as Facebook are tackling misinformation, reports Reuters.

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Facebook and other social network platforms have taken a wide range of measures to tackle misinformation around the Covid-19 and fake content in general. Reports, however, suggest false claims and conspiracies have continued to grow on these social platforms.