Did Facebook unknowingly help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election?
Facebook has released a more detailed plan to fight election interference for the 2018 midterms
More political ad oversight, less fake news.
The Washington Post / Getty Images
We’ll probably never know, but Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are trying to avoid another instance in the future where that might even be a question.
The company published a blog post on Thursday outlining some of the steps it’s taking to prevent foreign governments from using Facebook to try and manipulate an election, like Russian actors did on Facebook during the 2016 campaign.
A lot of the steps are things Facebook has already talked about‚ like fact-checking stories that show up in News Feed and adding stricter requirements for advertisers who buy political ads on the social network.
The most notable update is that Facebook started fact-checking photos and videos this week in France, in addition to fact-checking text stories that people share. “We’re starting in France with the AFP [Agence France-Presse] and will be scaling to more countries and partners soon,” the post reads.
A few other things Facebook is doing:
- The social network is notifying people who share fake news that they shared fake news, and also wants to “warn people who try to share it going forward.”
- Facebook is close to rolling out the new political ad dashboard that it announced last fall. The dashboard will let people see who is buying what political ads. The company has already been testing it in Canada and plans to roll it out in the U.S. this summer.
- Facebook is trying to prevent bad actors from getting started at all. The company says it’s blocking “millions of fake accounts each day at the point of creation.”
Will all this work? That’s the big question.
In an interview with the New York Times this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is expecting that foreign governments like Russia will continue to meddle if they can.
“I feel a lot better about the systems now. At the same time, I think Russia and other governments are going to get more sophisticated in what they do, too,” Zuckerberg said. “So we need to make sure that we up our game. This is a massive focus for us to make sure we’re dialed in for not only the 2018 elections in the U.S., but the Indian elections, the Brazilian elections, and a number of other elections that are going on this year that are really important.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
