Fake Facebook accounts: the never-ending battle against bots

The staggering figure of more than three billion fake accounts blocked by Facebook over a six-month period highlights the challenges faced by social networks in curbing automated accounts, or bots, and other nefarious efforts to manipulate the platforms.

Facebook said this week it "disabled" 1.2 billion fake accounts in the last three months of 2018 and 2.19 billion in the first quarter of 2019.

Most fake social media accounts are "bots," created by automated programs to post certain kinds of information -- a violation of Facebook's terms of service and part of an effort to manipulate social conversations. Sophisticated actors can create millions of accounts using the same program.

Facebook said its artificial intelligence detects most of these efforts and disables the accounts before they can post on the platform. Still, it acknowledges that around five percent of the more than two billion active Facebook accounts are probably fake.

Fake accounts may be used to amplify the popularity