The social network increased its estimate of the share of fake accounts from 2 to 3 percent and a number of duplicates from 6 to 10 percent.
That means that as many as 270 million of the platform’s 2.1-billion-strong user base could be false a population approaching on the size of the United States.
Facebook said the development was due to better tools for pursuing illegitimate activity rather than a swift spike in fishy sign-ups.
Unlike Twitter’s anything-goes attitude, Facebook is famously stern about verifying the real-life identity of each of its users. In some cases, it even reaches so far as to demand official documentation.
Yet fake records have still managed to proliferate on the platform some because of honest user mistakes and others devised to spread spam or operate as part of shady networks of bots.
The sign comes after Congress grilled Facebook and other tech groups this week on their role in publishing Russian-affiliated propaganda during the presidential election. The courses focused on the work of a Kremlin-linked “troll farm” called the Internet Research Agency, which used Facebook pages to distribute tens of thousands of posts to as many as 126 million Americans.
Facebook has earlier said that the actors behind pages that spread fake news or misinformation have used fake records to juice their interaction numbers and this game the company’s algorithm.
The social network’s made a show of clearing tens of thousands of fake accounts at a time before many global elections.
Each of these efforts was part of a larger campaign Facebook started on after the U.S. presidential election to rid the program of fake news, misinformation, and hoaxes of any kind.
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