Social Media Giant Facebook has announced a partnership with Washington based Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab in a bid to prevent its platform from being used in election meddling.
The Research Lab will hold the responsibility to monitor disinformation and other vulnerabilities in elections globally, including in India. The Experts will work closely aligned with Facebook’s security, policy and product teams to get in real time insights and updates on information and threats happening around the world.
Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Director at Facebook, said,
This will help increase the number of ‘eyes and ears’ we have working to spot potential abuse on our service – enabling us to more effectively identify gaps in our systems, pre-empt obstacles, and ensure that Facebook plays a positive role during elections all around the world.
The company has been heavily criticized from the past few days and the most firey one was over the issue of election security in the US, and thus it is focusing on making sure that their platform is free from manipulation by criminal groups abroad too.
In this context, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, “Our goals are to understand Facebook’s impact on upcoming elections-like Brazil, India, Mexico and the US midterms-and to inform our future product and policy decisions,” he said while testifying before the US Congress in April.
The social media company is now taking major steps for preventing its service from being abused and criticized. Facebook is heavily increasing the number of people working for safety and security, and also who use Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology so as to keep a check on the fake accounts during elections.
Atlantic Council’s Digital Research Unit Monitoring Missions will be used by Facebook to enable the social network focusing on certain geographical areas and to monitor misleading information and foreign intervention.
The company is investing quite a few efforts and money in this process. The Facebook and the Atlantic Council’s network will hopefully be helpful in getting back the reputation of Facebook which has been long gone.