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For the first time, Facebook included Instagram data in the publication of its biannual Transparency Report, released Wednesday, in which it discloses the actions it has taken to combat malicious content. The report is worth watching as it signals where and when Facebook is actually willing to crack down on its platforms, especially as CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on his anti-censorship stance.
Business Insider Intelligence
In Q3 2019, Instagram removed over 2 million pieces of content in four categories: sexual exploitation of children, terrorist propaganda, self-harm promotion, and the trafficking of drugs and firearms. For comparison, Facebook removed over 35 million pieces of content from the platform tied to the same four categories, along with six additional categories including spam, fake accounts, hate speech, bullying, violent content, and adult nudity.
It should be noted absolute counts of content removals are difficult to assess without greater context. For example, it’s impossible to determine if 35 million or 2 million pieces of content represent a significant proportion of harmful content on the platform, or whether the difference between the two figures is meaningful.
Notably absent from the Instagram data is any information on the removal of fake accounts, an important metric for influencer marketing. Fake accounts have proven to be a persistent and prevalent problem for Facebook: The social network disabled 1.7 billion accounts in Q3, up from the 1.5 billion it disabled in Q2.
Facebook estimates fake accounts represented approximately 5% of their global monthly active users (MAU) during both quarters. Given the high volume on Facebook, it’s highly likely Instagram faces an issue of its own with fake accounts. That’s a concern for brands investing in influencer marketing have realized: An estimated $8.5 billion is invested annually in influencer marketing on Instagram, but an estimated 15% of those funds are wasted on inflated follower counts, according to cybersecurity firm Cheq. An important step toward improving Instagram’s reliability for marketers will be evidence Instagram is taking active steps to remove these accounts as well as some idea of how prevalent such accounts are on the platform.
The inclusion of Instagram in this quarter’s report likely serves as a response to new concerns about the photo-sharing app’s potential for misinformation. In a report from the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Instagram was referred to as “perhaps the most effective platform” for the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency as its targeted voters during the 2016 election.
With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon and a greater percentage of foreign interference taking the shape of photos and video-based memes, the potential for Instagram to do harm is not lost on its parent company. By including data on its recent efforts in this newest report, FACEBOOK likely hopes to quell fears that Instagram will again be a source of malicious and misleading content.
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