Social Media giant Facebook, in a recently published blog, listed out the efforts it is making to protect the integrity of upcoming elections in several countries.
In the blog, Facebook said that its tactics include blocking and removing fake accounts, finding and removing bad actors, limiting the spread of false news and misinformation and bringing transparency to political advertising.
Some of the additional ways Facebook is working to strengthen its platform ahead of elections in 2019:
Citing Nigera, where Facebook banned foreign sponsored political ads, it said that this will also be implemented during the upcoming Ukraine elections.
Ahead of the European Parliament elections in March, Facebook said it will launch additional tools to help prevent foreign interference and make political and issue advertising on Facebook more transparent. Facebook says that advertisers will need to be authorized to purchase political ads, since the information will be publicly available online in a library for up to seven years.
These transparency tools for electoral ads will launch in India in February.
Facebook is planning to set up two new regional operations centers, focused on election integrity, located in its Dublin and Singapore offices. This will allow its global teams to work better work across regions in the run-up to elections.
Saying that its work towards fighting fake news is improving, Facebook follows a three-part framework to improve the quality and authenticity of stories:
The social media giant also said that it is continuing to expand its third-party fact checking program.
While Facebook said that there are improvements, it also admitted that the efforts to improve security never finish.
“We are up against determined adversaries who try to attack on many fronts and we recognize our role and responsibility. We will never stop all the bad actors, but we’re making real progress and we are committed to continuing to improve,” it said.
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