Facebook banned a whopping 2.2 billion fake accounts in Q1 2019 - almost twice as much as the previous quarter

Kevin Wolf/AP images for AVAAZ

100 cardboard cutouts of the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and CEO stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Tuesday, April 10, 2018.

Facebook banned a staggering 2.2 billion fake accounts in the first three months of 2019 - almost as many as the total number of real people who use the social network.

On Thursday, the Silicon Valley tech giant released the third edition of its Community Standards Enforcement report, a public report that details the company's efforts to keep its platform clear of fake accounts, abusive material, illegal activity, spam, and other nefarious content.

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It details a striking jump in the number of fake accounts it took action against: 2.19 billion were banned in Q1 2019, up from 1.2 billion in Q4 2018. In a blog post, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen wrote of this trend: "The amount of accounts we took action on increased due to automated attacks by bad actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at one time."

The data illustrates the sheer volume of malicious activity still ongoing on Facebook's platform: It has 2.38 billion genuine monthly active users in total on the social network.

The amount of hate speech Facebook took action on has also continued to climb - up to 4 million in the most recnet quarter from 3.3 million in the previous three months, and up from 2.5 milllion in Q1 2018. But Facebook's ability to proactively detect this content has also improved: 65.4% of it was detected by the company's systems and processes, up from 58.8% the previous quarter.

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