Guest Post – Surrounded by bots: Social media platforms delete 6.3B fake accounts, with Facebook and X at the top of the list
Popular social media platforms are constantly removing massive amounts of fake accounts and spam content. Surfshark’s analysis of annual public transparency reports reveals the staggering scale of this cleanup: Facebook, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn collectively remove 6.3B fake accounts. These platforms, along with YouTube and Instagram, also remove 11.1B pieces of spam content. On the dark market, fake account prices start at $0.08.
While AI agents are learning to interact with each other on their designated social media, bots pretending to be humans continue to sink popular platforms.
“I am convinced that the majority of fake accounts on social media are bots. Especially with the evolution of AI, producing and managing bots becomes easier. On some platforms, AI can fully cover the needs of “faking”. In contrast, on others it’s not that simple — for example, on Facebook, where interaction with real people and response to context are required,” says Justas Pukys, Senior Product Manager at Surfshark.
He explains that bots are programs designed to impersonate humans. They are centrally controlled, like marionettes, and trained to deceive both systems and humans. In addition, bots can also be real people who manage several accounts with a common goal, for example, to influence social media users’ attitudes, push an agenda on a certain issue, provoke society, or show exaggerated support for certain institutions or figures.
Comparing fake account removal volumes to active users reveals the enormous scale of the monitoring and removal that social media must perform.
On some platforms, the number of annual removals rivals or even exceeds the entire active user base. For example,Facebook, with 3B active users, removes 4.5B fake accounts annually — a volume 1.5 times its user count. Similarly, X reports removing 671M accounts each year for platform manipulation and spam, a figure that surpasses its 570M active users. TikTok deletes 1B fake accounts, equivalent to over half its active user base — 1.9B.
“Considering those platforms’ size, global reach, and impact on human opinion and behavior, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of fake accounts and content were even higher than presented in the official transparency reports. Also, I believe these numbers will continue to grow drastically in the future, unless social media finds effective ways to combat the threat,” says cybersecurity expert at Surfshark.
Real users face increasing scam risks
Given that social media is flooded with fake accounts and content, a really worrying issue is that real users can easily be scammed and harmed, both morally and financially. Consider these recommendations from Surfshark’s experts on how to avoid getting scammed:
Pay attention to suspicious account profile details: fake accounts usually have very few photos or only associative images. Usually, the account is created recently and has a vague or overly promotional bio.
Be aware of unnatural behavior:fake accounts often send friend requests to many people in a short period of time. They may immediately send you links or other suspicious offers, usually encouraging you to move the conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram quickly.
Fake accounts send repetitive or copy-paste comments: they tend to post the same message under many posts. They typically offer “too good to be true” benefits, such as crypto, giveaways, and miracle cures.
What should you do to avoid harm?
Don’t engage with suspicious accounts and content: don’t reply, argue, or click links;
Always check:look at important details such as the account’s age, bio, and number of friends;
Report the account and content: use the social media platform’s report feature;
Protect yourself: enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your account, make your social media profile private, and avoid sharing personal details publicly.
This entry was posted on March 5, 2026 at 9:19 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Surfshark. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Guest Post – Surrounded by bots: Social media platforms delete 6.3B fake accounts, with Facebook and X at the top of the list
Popular social media platforms are constantly removing massive amounts of fake accounts and spam content. Surfshark’s analysis of annual public transparency reports reveals the staggering scale of this cleanup: Facebook, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn collectively remove 6.3B fake accounts. These platforms, along with YouTube and Instagram, also remove 11.1B pieces of spam content. On the dark market, fake account prices start at $0.08.
While AI agents are learning to interact with each other on their designated social media, bots pretending to be humans continue to sink popular platforms.
“I am convinced that the majority of fake accounts on social media are bots. Especially with the evolution of AI, producing and managing bots becomes easier. On some platforms, AI can fully cover the needs of “faking”. In contrast, on others it’s not that simple — for example, on Facebook, where interaction with real people and response to context are required,” says Justas Pukys, Senior Product Manager at Surfshark.
He explains that bots are programs designed to impersonate humans. They are centrally controlled, like marionettes, and trained to deceive both systems and humans. In addition, bots can also be real people who manage several accounts with a common goal, for example, to influence social media users’ attitudes, push an agenda on a certain issue, provoke society, or show exaggerated support for certain institutions or figures.
Comparing fake account removal volumes to active users reveals the enormous scale of the monitoring and removal that social media must perform.
On some platforms, the number of annual removals rivals or even exceeds the entire active user base. For example, Facebook, with 3B active users, removes 4.5B fake accounts annually — a volume 1.5 times its user count. Similarly, X reports removing 671M accounts each year for platform manipulation and spam, a figure that surpasses its 570M active users. TikTok deletes 1B fake accounts, equivalent to over half its active user base — 1.9B.
“Considering those platforms’ size, global reach, and impact on human opinion and behavior, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of fake accounts and content were even higher than presented in the official transparency reports. Also, I believe these numbers will continue to grow drastically in the future, unless social media finds effective ways to combat the threat,” says cybersecurity expert at Surfshark.
Real users face increasing scam risks
Given that social media is flooded with fake accounts and content, a really worrying issue is that real users can easily be scammed and harmed, both morally and financially. Consider these recommendations from Surfshark’s experts on how to avoid getting scammed:
Pay attention to suspicious account profile details: fake accounts usually have very few photos or only associative images. Usually, the account is created recently and has a vague or overly promotional bio.
Be aware of unnatural behavior: fake accounts often send friend requests to many people in a short period of time. They may immediately send you links or other suspicious offers, usually encouraging you to move the conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram quickly.
Fake accounts send repetitive or copy-paste comments: they tend to post the same message under many posts. They typically offer “too good to be true” benefits, such as crypto, giveaways, and miracle cures.
What should you do to avoid harm?
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This entry was posted on March 5, 2026 at 9:19 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Surfshark. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.