BRIGHTON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 17: Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg speaks at a ... [+]
With the U.S. presidential election just two weeks away, Facebook said that it rejected 2.2 million ads that violate its voter interference policies. According to Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, the social network has also removed 120,000 posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook also tagged warnings to 150 million misleading or false posts related to the election. The company wants to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election when Russia manipulated its network to interfere with the voting process and election integrity. Leading up to the 2016 election, fake Facebook accounts with likely ties to Russia bought over $100,000 worth of political ads.
“We have established partnerships with 70 specialized media, including five in France, on the verification of information,” said Clegg. AFP is one of those partners.
These takedowns are leaps and bounds from where the company was just four years ago, when Clegg complained to the Journal du Dimanche that Facebook hadn’t yet identified or suppressed any foreign networks that interfered with the U.S. election.
Artificial intelligence that deletes billions of posts and fake accounts before they’re reported by users has been helpful in understanding network connections between accounts that would pay for ads promoting voter interference, said Clegg.
Last week, Facebook announced a ban on ads that discourage vaccination, as well as a ban on Holocaust denial content.
Also last week, the House Intelligence Committee held a hearing on the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms. Many of the expert witnesses pointed out that bad actors, both foreign and domestic, who spread misinformation in order to create chaos, prevent civil discourse and interfere in the U.S. election have been building up a system of amplifying divisive content for a decade.
These moves by Facebook are important, but they’re not timely by any means. Facebook’s strategy in 2020 might have prepared the company for a 2016 digital and political landscape, but is it sufficient for 2020?
