Facebook Reports on Community Standards, Banned 2.19 billion Accounts

[engine]

Facebook has published an update on its community standards as it tries to become more open with what it's doing, and it reports it disabled 1.2 billion accounts in the last quarter of 2018, and 2.19 billion accounts in the first quarter of 2019. Wow, just wow, that's a lot of accounts getting banned.

[newsroom.fb.com...]

It's worth a look at the stats.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I wonder if metrics like # likes and shares will be deducted if done by these accounts? Would be an interesting before/after comparison for pages if they did.

[tangor]

Call me a little confused ... I thought FB had 2.x billion users ... and they banned 3.21 billion in two quarters? How many bogus accounts have inflated the FB numbers all these years?

[lucy24]

Wow, just wow, that's a lot of accounts getting banned.

Wow, that’s a lot of robots.

ftfy

[engine]

I did a double take on that number when I saw it.
Yeah, these are scammers constantly trying to game the system.

[tangor]

Real question is how many more do they have to address? And can those be done without ideology involved? (that's secondary)

[topr8]

i imagine that is bot blocking on an industrial scale!

as a personal observation from when i used facebook as a person, i was a member of a couple of humour/joke groups where many members seemed to relish pushing the boundaries and were often outright banned or suspended (facebook jail as they'd call it) - but they already had multiple other accounts ready to use when it happened. of course these types of people manually opening accounts are small fry compared to the bots.

when it comes to 'real' people being banned ... which does need to happen ...

>>can those be done without ideology involved? (that's secondary)

i very much doubt it, facebook like all other social media companies take an idealogical/moral/political position, as has already been shown. i believe it's a question to be had, as to if this is acceptable or not ... governments will have this debate in the future i suspect.

[RhinoFish]

Billy Idol makes more sense with each passing year...

Eyes without a face, got no human grace your eyes without a face
Such a human waste your eyes without a face
And now it's getting worse

:-)

[mcneely]

... that’s a lot of robots.

Twitter has a bot problem as well -- Fertile ground these social sites are

[JS_Harris]

Facebook is trying to stem the exodus yet they aren't fixing the rampant one-sided censorship and sharing of personal data. Zuck can spread all the honey he likes, until Facebook ceases enforcing it's political will instead of user privacy Facebook is going to underperform. Personally I will never again put effort into building anything on a Zuckerberg platform, i'm not alone.

The company Crossfit, worth 4B dollars, just announced they quit Facebook and Whatsapp because of it, as have many others. Crossfit statement: [crossfit.com...]

[tangor]

I hear refrains of Bob Dylan ... "The Times They Are A-Changing..."

[Panthro]

Only a few more to go and they can finally shut that place down

[mosxu]

So your ads were being displayed to 1.2 billion fake users?

[bwnbwn]

mosxu yes and I suspect that number is low

[RhinoFish]

I still get fake bot friend reqs all the time, FB doesn't even fully understand how they are enabling abuse.
And on Instagram (owned by FB), ouch, even worse.

They wield the power to censor actual people, but the ad fraud and bot fraud is rampant.
Focus Zuck, focus on the real problems!

[RhinoFish]

Eventually, they'll charge people $1 / month, the charge process will not only verify people, it'll will put a cost in place that prevents scammers from scaling.
Then policing will have teeth!

And if they had a checkbox...
[ ] Only Share and Interact with Paid, Verified Users.
I'm in!
They can allow anonymous / free / unverified users all they want, but I'd avoid them with one click!

[IanCP]

Facebook - nice to look at the children's photos from time to time...

Other than that? No interest at all.

[blend27]

How come almost every poster in this thread has a 'Like', some more than one, and I don't? Oh, may be yet....

[tangor]

@blend27 ... Usually you have to post SOMETHING to get a like ... and you did! :)

[IanCP]

Just as you now gained a like yourself mate.

Is that how this new fangled Facebook works?