Sunday 22 / December / 2024
Muscat: Facebook is preparing to fight fake news and interference in India's upcoming elections, according to a senior official from the social media platform.
Ajit Mohan, Managing Director and Vice President of Facebook India, made this point while sharing the company's plans to ensure its platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) are not abused and that the impending Indian elections are free and fair.
In a blog post, Mohan said, "As Indians prepare to vote in the General Election for the 17th Lok Sabha, Facebook and our family of apps continue our efforts to help make sure the elections are fair and free from interference, both foreign and domestic."
The work, Mohan wrote, is being done by dozens of teams in India and around the world and "began over 18 months ago with a detailed planning and risk assessment across our platforms."
"The findings allowed us to concentrate our work on key areas, including blocking and removing fake accounts; fighting the spread of misinformation; stopping abuse by domestic actors; spotting attempts at foreign meddling; and taking action against inauthentic coordinated campaigns,” Mohan said.
Facebook has launched political transparency tools to provide a clearer image to people regarding where the ads that they see are coming from, Mohan further explained.
"Anyone who wants to run an ad in India related to politics has to first confirm their identity and location, and give more details about who paid for or published the ad. We then run the ad with a “Paid for by” or “Published by” disclaimer and house it in a searchable Ad Library for seven years."
The 'Ad Library' allows ad information as well as demographics to be viewed.
Facebook's efforts will also be global this time around, with two regional operation centres in Singapore and Dublin focused specifically on election integrity.
"These teams include engineers, operations specialists and data scientists, and will work closely with staff in our Menlo Park, CA headquarters, as well as with local experts in Delhi. This structure helps strengthen our global coordination and speed our response times, adding another layer of defence against false news, misinformation, hate speech and voter suppression," Mohan added.
The technological giant is also leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to combat interference.
The tools used by the company block or remove around one million accounts a day, according to Mohan.
"They also help us, at a large scale, identify abusive or violating content, quickly locate it across the platform and remove it in bulk. This dramatically reduces its ability to spread. We continue to expand on this initiative, adding 24 new languages — including 16 for India — to our automatic translation system."
Facebook's efforts have resulted in the shutting down of accounts and pages on the grounds of spam and coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
According to the company's Head of Cybersecurity Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, 687 of the accounts and pages recently removed were linked to an IT Cell of the INC.
Another 15 that were shut down were linked to an Indian company named Silver Touch.
Gleicher, in his statement, confirmed that an additional 227 pages and 94 accounts in India were removed for violating Facebook’s policies against spam and misrepresentation.
