Is Facebook for reals?
A representative from the social media platform said at a press conference today that there will be less false news appearing on the social platform. According to her, it was Facebook’s way of protecting the Philippines’ May mid-term elections from unscrupulous users.
According to Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director of Global Politics and Government Outreach Team, the platform has made it harder for offenders to manipulate the elections because it has increased its safety and security staff from 10,000 to 30,000. This means that there will be more people going after fake accounts which spread false news, ABS-CBN News reported.
Harbath said that 1.5 billion fake accounts were taken off Facebook in 2018 as soon as they were created, reported the Philippine Star.
Harbath said that they have been preparing for the Philippine mid-term elections since last year and that they have learned a lot from what occurred during the 2016 presidential elections, Rappler reported.
She said: “We’ve been learning from every election. We think we absolutely learned a lot from the 2016 elections here in the Philippines. And we’ve been working with many partners since then to better understand sort of what happened then, and the systems and things we need to be putting into place to make sure we can protect the integrity of these elections and all future elections.”
Bloomberg reported that Facebook allegedly trained members of then-Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign team for the 2016 elections.
The campaign team used Facebook to spread their messages to voters with the help of volunteers. However, Duterte’s “Facebook army” began circulating “aggressive messages, insults, and threats of violence” on the platform. Eventually, it spread false news.
It obviously worked.
Harbath said that they are aiming for a “more informed electorate,” reported GMA News.
Harbath also said that they are working with the Commission on Elections to ensure that Facebook can be utilized properly to share updates about the mid-term elections.
She added that Facebook has made advertisements more transparent.
She said: “We added an info on ads tab to any page on Facebook… You can see information when the page is created and if there has been page name changes and the [page’s] country location.”
She said that this will help users to know more about these pages and advertisements that could be influencing their political beliefs.
Facebook has also been used to influence the American election. In May last year, the United States Congress released thousands of what are said to be Russia-linked Facebook ads that allegedly influenced voters of the 2016 presidential elections.
Will it be different this time? It remains to be seen.
