Facebook Announces Election Partnership with Atlantic Council

• Facebook announced last month that it is going to become stricter than ever against fake news during elections.
• The social media company announced its partnership with the Atlantic council ramp up its efforts against misinformation and fake accounts.
• Facebook will be doubling its staff dedicated to blocking fake accounts and removing misinformation as well as employ artificial intelligence to automate the process.

Facebook announced its partnership with the Atlantic Council today as a part of the social media company’s initiative to remove misinformation from the platform. The social media giant will double the staff involved in identifying and removing fake accounts while artificial intelligence will be employed to help the staff identify fake posts.

Image Courtesy of Opportunity Diary

Facebook revealed in a blog that they believe they do not have enough resources to manage and control fake news during elections. The company opted for outside help from the Atlantic Council with the midterm elections in the US happening soon. During election season, there is a massive spike in the number of bad ads and propaganda content that is spread on the platform.

With not much to help users identify between fake and real content, an independent commission has been deployed by Facebook to help research during election season. Outside governments, exports, and other companies are partnering with Facebook to ensure the content on Facebook is kept a check on. The partnership is a long-term plan to allow the platform to be used as a credible source of research of social media during election seasons and to enable fair elections that are not disrupted by fake news and propaganda.

Atlantic Council has a track record of providing effective and innovative solutions. The company’s research team will work with Facebook to guide the policy, product and security teams at the social media company. Atlantic will offer real-time insights and inform the company of emerging threats in the social media platform. Disinformation campaigns from all over the world will be identified by Atlantic Council to help such content be removed from the social media website. Facebook stated that they would take this opportunity to better their content control systems and weed out disinformation from the website in more efficient ways.