Meta has published fresh transparency and community standards compliance reports that provide information on all content removal requests that have been sent to the company in recent months.
Meta's transparency report covers the second half of 2022, and its community standards update for the first quarter of 2023 gives an overview of all actions taken either because of rule violations or legal and government requests.
And while most trends remain relatively stable, there are some notable shifts in the data.
First, about nudity and sexual content - Meta has noticed an increase in deletions here, based, it says, on an increase in the number of spammers sharing large amounts of offensive videos on Facebook.
Most of this was detected by Meta's systems before users even reported it, but there has also been a slight increase in users reporting this type of content, which is also likely the result of an increase in spammers in this area.
Meta also reports that it has increased the rate of proactive detection of bullying and harassment, with more content of this type being removed before anyone sees it.
This is a critical area because it ensures that users are not exposed to harmful content, and it's good that Meta's systems are better at detecting such content before it is seen. Meta is also stepping up enforcement of its policy on dangerous organizations.
While Instagram is also taking more seriously the fight against depictions of drug use in the app.
Interestingly, though, Meta's number of fake account deletions actually declined in the first quarter of 2023, dropping from 1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 426 million in the first quarter of 2023.
Nonetheless, Meta claims that fake accounts account for 4 to 5 percent of active Facebook users worldwide per month.
Meta also provided new data on government requests and their sources:
"In the second half of 2022, the number of user data requests from the world's governments increased 0.8% from 237,414 to 239,388. The U.S. continues to make the most requests of this total, followed by India, Germany, Brazil, France and the U.K."
"Government requests were in the spotlight again this week amid reports that Twitter censored content at the behest of the Turkish government ahead of local elections. Twitter CEO Elon Musk explained that Twitter complies with local laws, and noted that such requests are "normal for all Internet companies."