Russia has been engaging in cyber warfare, including propaganda and disinformation campaigns, with the aim disrupt and destabilize democracies around the world. During the last election in the United States, social media was one of their primary tools to engineer public opinion and sew division and discord in the populace. Yesterday Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did a live video session to address how Facebook is planning to fight this threat.
Here are the key initiatives, as summarized by Max Greenwood on Techvibes:
- As outlined above, Facebook is working with the U.S. government about any kind of interference in an election or otherwise.
- They will continue to work with the U.S. government.
- Continue to work on their own investigation with the 2016 election. They are looking into other Russian groups, and even individual campaigns.
- Make political advertising more transparent. They will force political pages to disclose what ads they have currently running.
- Strengthen the ad review process for political ads. This means less programmatically-bought ads.
- Increase the investment in security and election integrity. Double the size of the team working on election integrity, and add 250 more people focused on security and safety of the community.
- Expand relationships with election commissions around the world and outline risks found in other countries specific elections.
- Increase sharing of threat information with other companies. Explore more ways to share info about electoral abuse.
- Work proactively to strengthen the democratic process beyond pushing back against threats. Facebook will create services to secure communities while engaging with the political process. This might include adapting the anti-bully system to political harassment as well.
- Working to ensure the integrity of German election this coming weekend.
