Facebook has published figures showing the amount of controversial content it removed in the first quarter of 2018. Amid the spread of fake news and increasing levels of inflammatory content circulating online, the social network has come under immense pressure. That has resulted in it disclosing measures taken to remove posts violating its standards. That content can be broken down into six categories: graphic violence, adult nudity and sexual activity, terrorist propaganda, hate speech, spam and fake accounts.

Between January and March of this year, 837 million posts containing spam were removed from Facebook, accounting for 97 percent of all content taken down. 21 million posts containing adult nudity were also taken offline, 96 percent of which was found and flagged by Facebook’s technology before it was reported. Likewise, 86 percent of all posts containing graphic violence were pinpointed and identified automatically before they were reported – 3.5 million were given warning labels or deleted in total.

Facebook’s technology has been less successful at identifying posts containing hate speech but nevertheless, 2.5 million such posts were removed from the social network in Q1. 38 percent of all removals were flagged by technology. When it comes to spam, the content most frequently deleted, disabling fake accounts is critical. During the first quarter of the year, 583 million fake accounts were disabled and most of them were removed within minutes of registration.