Facebook said it took down 583 million fake profiles in the first three months of the year, and also scrubbed 837 million pieces of spam and acted on 2.5 million instances of hate speech.
The figures were released on Tuesday as part of Facebook's first-ever report on how effectively it's enforcing community standards.
This report covers Facebook's enforcement efforts between October 2017 to March 2018, and it covers six areas: graphic violence, adult nudity and sexual activity, terrorist propaganda, hate speech, spam, and fake accounts.
Most of the action Facebook takes to remove bad content is around spam and the fake accounts they use to distribute it. For example:
- Facebook took down 837 million pieces of spam in Q1 2018 - nearly 100% of which we found and flagged before anyone reported it; and
- In Q1, Facebook disabled about 583 million fake accounts - most of which were disabled within minutes of registration. This is in addition to the millions of fake account attempts Facebook prevents daily from ever registering with Facebook. Overall, Facebook estimates that around 3 to 4% of the active Facebook accounts on the site during this time period were still fake.
In terms of other types of violating content:
- Facebook took down 21 million pieces of adult nudity and sexual activity in Q1 2018 - 96% of which was found and flagged by Facebook's technology before it was reported. Overall, Facebook estimates that out of every 10,000 pieces of content viewed on Facebook, 7 to 9 views were of content that violated the company's adult nudity and pornography standards.
- For graphic violence, Facebook took down or applied warning labels to about 3.5 million pieces of violent content in Q1 2018 - 86% of which was identified by Facebook's technology before it was reported to Facebook.
- For hate speech, Facebook's technology still doesn't work that well and so it needs to be checked by Facebook's review teams. The company removed 2.5 million pieces of hate speech in Q1 2018 - 38% of which was flagged by Facebook's technology.
Facebook came under intense scrutiny earlier this year over the use of private data and the impact of unregulated content on its community of 2.2 billion monthly users, with governments around the world questioning the Menlo Park, California-based company's policies.