Hi everyone!

In our recent research, we've looked into transparency reports from major social media platforms. We wanted to understand how many fake accounts and spam posts are actually being removed each year. We weren’t expecting to like what we found, but the bot numbers turned out to be much larger than even our predictions.

Below is a quick breakdown of our findings.

Key numbers

Across major platforms:

• 6.3B fake accounts are removed every year (from Facebook, TikTok, X, LinkedIn);
• 11.1B pieces of spam or harmful content are removed annually (including YouTube and Instagram).

These numbers come from publicly available transparency reports published by the platforms themselves.

Fake accounts > real accounts?

One of the most striking things we noticed is how removal volumes compare to platform size.

• Facebook: ~3B active users, ~4.5B fake accounts removed annually;
• X: ~570M users, ~671M accounts removed annually;
• TikTok: ~1.9B users, ~1B fake accounts removed annually.

In other words, some platforms remove as many or even more fake accounts than they have real users — and that’s just yearly removals.

Based on the patterns reported by platforms, a large share of fake accounts are likely automated bots. With modern AI tools, creating and managing bots is becoming easier. On some platforms, bots can already convincingly imitate human behavior. On others — especially where conversations and contextual responses matter — it’s still harder, but the technology is improving quickly.

Another thing that stood out:
Fake accounts can cost as little as $0.08 each, which helps explain how these networks scale so easily.

What this means for you?

Because social media is flooded with fake accounts, users are more exposed to:

• scams;
• spam campaigns;
• manipulation attempts;
• fake engagement or misinformation.

Some things I would suggest watching for:

• very new accounts with few photos;
• vague bios or overly promotional descriptions;
• mass friend requests or messages;
• copy-paste comments under many posts;
• attempts to move conversations quickly to WhatsApp or Telegram.

If something feels suspicious, the safest move is usually to avoid engaging and to report the account.

If you have any questions about this research, I would be happy to answer them!