Meta’s social media platform Facebook announced this week that it has deleted approximately ten million accounts engaged in spam activities, warning that more accounts will be removed in the coming days.
On July 14, Facebook stated that it had taken action against around 500,000 accounts involved in “spamming or false engagement,” ranging from downgrading comments to reducing content distribution to prevent these accounts from profiting.
According to the announcement released on July 14, Facebook also “shut down about 10 million profiles pretending to be large content creators.”
The company has mentioned that it will continue to take action against other accounts, targeting those that “pretend to be creators but send out various spam emails,” with these accounts posting topics or videos similar to others.
Furthermore, in the coming months, Facebook plans to gradually introduce new reform measures, stating, “We will introduce stronger initiatives to reduce non-original content on Facebook and ultimately protect creators and enhance the sharing of original content.”
The company also stated that accounts not posting original content may face penalties at least. The posts or videos with the most distribution on the platform will be those with original content.
Facebook also suggests avoiding posting content generated by “visible third-party watermarks and clearly from other applications or sources,” recommending the use of “high-quality textual descriptions” and advising against posting “ultra-short videos of little value to the audience.”
The announcement additionally mentions that the company’s technological capabilities are sufficient to better detect repeatedly distributed content, reducing the spread of such content on the platform.
Facebook mentions that they are exploring various methods to provide appropriate traffic for creators, such as testing adding links to original content on replayed videos to direct audiences to the source.
As Facebook released this news this week, Google’s YouTube also confirmed similar policy changes, “banning the earning of advertising revenue from mass-produced, repetitive, or false propagating content.”
A YouTube spokesperson mentioned, “We encourage creators to use AI tools to enhance storytelling, and channels using AI are still eligible for earnings. All channels must adhere to our monetization policies and report behavior that alters or synthesizes their original content.”
Meanwhile, Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday that the company is planning to invest “billions of dollars” to build AI computing infrastructure, confirming the set up of several AI computing clusters. The first project is expected to start in 2026.
“Meta’s Superintelligence Lab will have a leading-edge computing power,” Zuckerberg stated in a Facebook post, “I look forward to collaborating with top researchers to advance developments in cutting-edge fields.”
Also this week, Zuckerberg and Meta reached a settlement with investors, concluding an $8 billion lawsuit. Shareholders of Meta accused Zuckerberg of allowing infringements on user privacy on Facebook, resulting in damages to the company’s interests.
On Thursday, plaintiff lawyers confirmed this settlement agreement to reporters in court.
Meta’s shareholders filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, former executive Marc Andreessen, and other former company executives, including former COO Sheryl Sandberg, holding them responsible for the billions of dollars in fines and legal fees paid by the company in recent years.
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion after finding that the company failed to comply with a 2012 data protection agreement with regulatory authorities.