Facebook has disabled over 1.2 billion "fake" accounts in the past two quarters, many of them created using "scripts or bots, with the intent of spreading spam or conducting illicit activities such as scams," the company revealed in its first ever Community Standards Enforcement report. 583 million such accounts were taken down in the first quarter of 2018, and 694 million accounts were culled out in the previous quarter. The company attributes the decrease in takedowns in the most recent quarter to “variability of our detection technology’s ability to find and flag them.” Facebook said that most of these accounts were “disabled within minutes of registration,” but a report on Recode noted that Facebook doesn’t catch all fake accounts. The company estimates that three to 4% of its monthly active users are “fake,” up from two to 3% in Q3 of 2017, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Other highlights from the report regarding actions taken this quarter are: Terrorist propaganda: The company took enforcement action on 1.9 million posts related to terrorism by Al Qaeda, ISIS and affiliates in the first quarter of this year, up from 1.1 million posts in the last quarter of 2018. Facebook said the change in numbers between quarters are affected by "internal factors, including the effectiveness of our detection technology and review processes. They're also affected by external factors such as real-world events that increase terrorist propaganda content on Facebook." The company also noted that while this standard is "enforced…
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