Facebook, Twitter: We’re Fighting Millions of Fake Accounts Weekly

While testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey reported their platforms are working to fight off hundreds of thousands of fake users every day. “We are now blocking millions of attempts to register false accounts,” Sandberg said, “each and every day.” Dorsey echoed Sandberg’s remarks, noting that due to Twitter’s increased efforts to identify fake accounts “we’re now removing over 200 percent more accounts for violating our policies. We’re identifying and challenging 8 to 10 million suspicious accounts every week, and we’re thwarting over a half million accounts from logging into Twitter every single day.” The pair’s statements are part of their larger Wednesday effort to explain to Congress what their companies have done in the past year to prevent manipulation by foreign actors, after both companies admitted that Russia-backed agents manipulated their platforms to influence the 2016 elections. In prepared testimony cited by The Wall Street Journal, Sandberg wrote “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act.”