Facebook disabled 1.3B fake accounts over a three-month period
The social network details its efforts to fight misinformation ahead of a congressional hearing later this week.
- Carrie has lived on both coasts and can definitively say that Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are the best.
Facebook disabled more than 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December 2020. That's just one of the stats the company highlighted in a blog post on Monday detailing its efforts to combat misinformation ahead of a House hearing on the topic later this week.
Facebook has over 35,000 working on tackling misinformation on its platforms, according to the blog post. The social network said it's also removed more than 12 million pieces of content with misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines with help from its AI systems, and that over the past three years, it's removed over 100 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior from its platforms.
Read more: Google, Facebook, Twitter CEOs will face US lawmakers again: How to watch
"Despite all of these efforts, there are some who believe that we have a financial interest in turning a blind eye to misinformation," wrote Facebook Vice President Guy Rosen in the blog post, which was also published in Morning Consult. "The opposite is true. We have every motivation to keep misinformation off of our apps and we've taken many steps to do so at the expense of user growth and engagement."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the tech executives set to testify on Thursday during a congressional hearing focused on the spread of misinformation on online platforms. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will also testify during the remote joint hearing held by the subcommittees for Communications and Technology and for Consumer Protection and Commerce.