Facebook has deployed technology tools like artificial intelligence and thousands of people to work on security as the company\u2019s \u201cmajor focus\u201d this year is to protect the integrity of upcoming elections in several countries, including India, on its platform, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said.<\/p>\n
Terming 2018 a \u201cbig year\u201d for elections, Zuckerberg said Facebook was enhancing its security features to prevent trolls from spreading information.<\/p>\n
The social media giant has been slammed over a major data breach scandal by Cambridge Analytica, a British firm linked to Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the US Senate Alabama special election last year, we successfully deployed some new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that removed Macedonian trolls who were trying to spread information during the election. We now have about 15,000 people working on security and content review and we\u2019ll have more than 20,000 by the end of this year,\u201d Zuckerberg told reporters during a conference call Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be a big year for elections ahead with the US midterms and elections in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Hungary and others. This is going to be a major focus for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Several Indian states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are scheduled to go for polls this year and the general elections are due in a little over a year from now.<\/p>\n
A day earlier, Zuckerberg said Facebook had taken big steps by taking down Russia\u2019s Internet Research Agency (IRA) pages that were targeting the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we became aware of their activity after the 2016 US elections, we\u2019ve been working to root out the IRA and protect the integrity of elections around the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a number of important elections that we\u2019ve focused on. A few months after the 2016 elections, there was a French presidential election and leading up to that we deployed some new AI tools that took down more than 30,000 fake accounts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In German election, the company developed a new playbook for working with the local election commission on share information on threats it received, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have more work to do here and we\u2019re going to continue working very hard to defend against them. There\u2019s the Mexican presidential election, there are big elections in India and Brazil as well as in Pakistan and Hungary and a number of other countries and the US midterms, of course,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg pointed out three different types of activity that required different strategies for fighting.<\/p>\n
Economic actors, who are basically spammers; the second are governments trying to interfere in elections, and then the third is just polarisation and sometimes lack of truthfulness in what you\u2019ve described as the media, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we just make it so that the economics stop working for them then they\u2019ll move on to something else. I mean, these are literally the same type of people who had been sending you Viagra e-mails in the \u201990s. We can attack it on both sides. on the revenue side, we make it so that they can\u2019t run the Facebook ad network,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The second category are the national security type issues, Zuckerberg said, adding that is the Russian election interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to solve that, what we need to do is to identify these bad actors\u2026What we need to do is to just track that really carefully in order to just be able to remove it from Facebook entirely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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