Facebook has announced that it has created a ‘war room’ to fight the spread of fake news in the run up to the US midterms, as well as elections in Brazil …
Reuters reports that the social network is working with international Republican and Democratic non-profits.
The company has been carrying out exercises to test its ability to detect hoax stories, including those geared to voter suppression.
The largest social network, under intense pressure to combat propaganda, said it would work abroad with the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, created in the 1980s and funded by the U.S. government to promote democratic processes. The institutes have informal ties to their namesake U.S. parties.
Research into the effectiveness of Facebook’s efforts to date showed mixed news.
[Another scenario tested was] election-eve efforts to suppress voting with false claims about ballot procedures.
Both Facebook and Twitter have taken down hundreds of fake accounts linked to coordinated state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, but it’s been suggested that the problem is bigger than either platform realised. Facebook’s former security head even thinks it’s too late to save this year’s midterms.
“Even after the sharp drop following the election, Facebook engagements of fake news sites still average roughly 70 million per month,” 15 times the engagements from Twitter, the research concluded.
Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
