Nearly five million social media profiles were taken down globally in a given week underlining the extent of automated fraud, spam and orchestrated manipulation on the digital environments that Australians use on a daily basis.
The massive purge was a consequence of the recent updates on the number of removals from the main social media platforms.
Although the main statement was not given jointly by the main platforms it is pertinent to note that the number of deletions can easily cross the million mark within a short period of intense efforts to eliminate them.
The large number of deleted accounts was found to be inauthentic accounts that are normally posted in large numbers to spread scams.
The platforms have a combination of both automated detection processes and human moderation to determine accounts that exhibit unusual activity trends.
This includes accounts that post rapidly and thousands of accounts acting in a synchronized manner.
For Australian consumers these statistics simply underscore the persistence of copycat followers, scams involving financial investments and other acts of impersonation despite the long standing crackdowns on these issues on the platform.
In the past, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has consistently highlighted the significant use of social media platforms for online scams and the estimated annual financial losses in the billions.
These scams include messages from outside the country.
However, with such a large removal of content recently there is also a debate around platform accountability within the Australian government itself.
The Australian federal government has been working towards developing a range of policies that would encourage or even force these technology companies to become more active within preventing any harm that could come to users, such as scams, misinformation or harmful content.
Industry observers believe large scale weekly purges are an indicator of improved detection but the large numbers are an indicator that the issue is huge nonetheless.
This is because bots can detect and remove the existence of fake accounts in just minutes but the scammers are quite adept and switch IPs, hack mobile devices and begin using the latest facilities such as video comments and private messaging.
However civil liberties groups concerned with privacy and freedom of speech argue that over aggressive automation can at times mistake genuine users especially activists or journalists or those utilizing privacy software.
Platforms are aware that mistakes happen and offer appeal mechanisms which are deemed opaque and cumbersome.
As far as regular Australians are concerned however, there is no change to the guidance.
It is urged that people be suspicious of unsolicited messages that accounts claiming to be a business or a public figure be checked for authenticity and that users notify them of suspicious activity.
The scale of around five million accounts deleted in one week reflects both the progress being made and the effectiveness of enforcement on these platforms.
Although there is some effectiveness being witnessed here it is worth noting that it only translates to a very small portion of what is happening on social platforms every day.
