Facebook Has Shut Down 5.4 Billion Fake Accounts 

Since January to September 2019, Facebook has shut down 5.4 billion fake accounts. The 5.4 billion number is compared to roughly 3.3 billion fake accounts that were removed in 2018.

According to NDTV reports, the company's new Community Standards Enforcement report, revealed that the fake accounts were removed to encompass about 5 percent of the platform’s active users.

Reacting over the same, Facebook stated that “We estimate that fake accounts represented approximately 5 percent of our worldwide monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook during Q2 and Q3 2019. There are two types of accounts we identify as fake: abusive and user-misclassified". 

"Over the past six months, the firm has improved its ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts. We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems," Facebook further wrote. 

Highlighting over the same, CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a recent conference call told CNN that the removal of fake accounts shows that the company is taking the issue seriously.

“Because our numbers are high doesn’t mean there’s that much more harmful content. It just means we are working harder to identify this content and that’s why it’s higher,” he added on a conference call.

In a span of few months, Facebook also removed more than 11.6 million pieces of content that catered to child nudity and the sexual exploitation of children.