Facebook junking a million fake accounts every day

Facebook on Monday said it was removing or blocking one million abusive accounts every day by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools.

"As Indians prepare to vote in the General Election for the 17th Lok Sabha, Facebook and our family of apps continue our efforts to help make sure the elections are fair and free from interference, both foreign and domestiic," Facebook India's Managing Director and Vice President Ajit Mohan said.

Using AI and ML, Facebook and its associates platforms are blocking or removing almost one million accounts a day, he said in a statement.

Stating that artificial intelligence and machine learning help Facebook in a big way to identify abusive or violating content at a large scale, quickly locate it and remove it in bulk, he added that this reduces its ability to spread. "We continue to expand on this initiative, adding 24 new languages—including 16 for India—to our automatic translation system," he said.

He said the company has already launched political advertisement transparency. Last week nearly 700 Pages, groups and accounts were removed in India for violating Facebook’s policies on coordinated inauthentic behaviour and spam.

The US-based firm also engaged third party fact checkers covering eight of the most spoken languages — English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Gujarati. Soon the company will add more languages, he said.