Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 24 May 2019
Facebook: Fake account removal doubles in 6 months to 3B

By BARBARA ORTUTAY Dipayan Ghosh, a former
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook employee and
Facebook removed more White House tech policy
than 3 billion fake accounts adviser who is currently a
from October to March, Harvard fellow, said absent
twice as many as the pre- greater transparency from
vious six months, the com- Facebook there is no way
pany said Thursday. of knowing whether its im-
Nearly all of them were proved automated detec-
caught before they had a tion is doing a better job of
chance to become "ac- containing the disinforma-
tive" users of the social net- tion problem.
work. "We lack public transpar-
In a new report, Face- ency into the scale of dis-
book said it saw a "steep information operations on
increase" in the creation Facebook in the first place,"
of abusive, fake accounts. he said.
While most of these fake And even if just 5 million ac-
accounts were blocked counts escaped through
"within minutes" of their the cracks, Ghosh added,
creation, the company how much hate speech
said this increase of "auto- and disinformation are they
mated attacks" by bad ac- This July 16, 2013 file photo shows a sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. This July spreading through bots
tors meant not only that it 16, 2013 file photo shows a sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. "that subvert the demo-
caught more of the fake Associated Press cratic process by injecting
accounts, but that more of chaos into our political dis-
them slipped through the better, so do the efforts by Facebook employs thou- counts. Only in instances course?" "The only way to
cracks. the creators of these fake sands of people to review where a user has been address this problem in the
As a result, the company accounts.The new num- posts, photos, comments booted off the service and long term is for government
estimates that 5% of its 2.4 bers come as the compa- and videos for violations. won an appeal to be rein- to intervene and compel
billion monthly active us- ny grapples with challenge Some things are also de- stated does it ask to see ID transparency into these
ers are fake accounts, or after challenge, ranging tected without humans, documents. platform operations and
about 119 million. This is up from fake news to Face- using artificial intelligence. While some have argued privacy for the end con-
from an estimated 3% to 4% book's role in elections in- Both humans and AI make for stricter authentication sumer," he said.
in the previous six-month re- terference, hate speech mistakes and Facebook on social media services, Facebook CEO Mark Zuck-
port. and incitement to violence has been accused of po- the issue is thorny. People erberg has called for gov-
The increase shows the in the U.S., Myanmar, India litical bias as well as ham- including U.N. free expres- ernment regulation to de-
challenges Facebook fac- and elsewhere. fisted removals of posts dis- sion rapporteur David Kaye cide what should be con-
es in removing accounts Facebook also said Thurs- cussing — rather than pro- say it's important to allow sidered harmful content
created by computers to day that it removed more moting — racism. pseudonymous speech on- and on other issues. But at
spread spam, fake news than 7 million posts, pho- A thorny issue for Facebook line for human rights activ- least in the U.S., govern-
and other objectionable tos and other material be- is its lack of procedures for ists and others whose lives ment regulation of speech
material. Even as Face- cause it violated its rules authenticating the identi- could otherwise be endan- could run into First Amend-
book's detection tools get against hate speech. ties of those setting up ac- gered. ment hurdles.q

Las Vegas tourism board backs $49M Elon Musk transit system

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A com- three underground stations ing a company that has yet
pany backed by tech bil- accessible from conven- to deliver a transit system.
lionaire Elon Musk has been tion center's halls. The authority will reimburse
awarded a nearly $49 mil- The company plans to im- the company as it com-
lion contract to build a mediately pursue permits pletes certain stages of the
transit system using self-driv- to start construction in Sep- project, like completing ex-
ing vehicles underneath tember. It aims to debut cavation for the first station
the Las Vegas Convention the system by December and digging the first 100
Center. 2020. feet (30.5 meters) of the
The board of directors of "The first thing that's impor- first tunnel. Full payment is
the Las Vegas Conven- tant is to get it right," Au- contingent on the compa-
tion and Visitors Author- thority President and CEO ny demonstrating that the
ity approved the contract Steve Hill told the Las Vegas system can support an av-
Wednesday with The Bor- Review-Journal . "We want erage of 4,400 passengers
ing Company, the Musk- to do it as quickly as pos- per hour. Construction will
backed enterprise based In this Dec. 18, 2018 file photo Elon Musk, co-founder and chief sible, but we want our cus- be able to proceed with-
executive officer of Tesla Inc., speaks during an unveiling event
in Hawthorne, California. for the Boring Co. Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif. tomers to be comfortable out disruption to traffic or
People would be trans- Associated Press with it." other surface activity, Hill
ported underground on Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn said. The system also could
self-driving electric vehicles porting up to 16 people at nel system will run less than Goodman cast the only be expanded, which could
from three types of Tesla time through parallel tun- a mile (1.6 kilometer) long. vote against the project. be part of the solution to
Model X chassis. The system nels, each running in a sin- The system also will include At a meeting last week, she the city's transportation
will be capable of trans- gle direction. The twin tun- a pedestrian tunnel and cited concerns about hir- problems, he said.q