Facebook Reveals Its Plans to Protect Elections This Year

• Facebook revealed a number of changes coming to the platform to protect the upcoming elections in multiple countries this year.
• Political ads will now require complete registration, and advertiser identity will be visible to all users.
• Two new “war rooms” will also be set up in Dublin and Singapore to tackle misinformation campaigns.

With elections in EU, India, Israel, and Ukraine scheduled in 2019, social media platform Facebook is gearing towards preventing misinformation campaigns on the website. Similar to the War Room opened in the US prior to the recently concluded mid-term elections, two regional offices will be established in Dublin and Singapore.

Over 30,000 people are working towards ensuring safety and security on the platform which is thrice the staff Facebook had assigned in 2017. With the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019, new tools will be available which will make advertiser registration compulsory for political campaigns. The platform’s users will also be able to see the names and organizations behind political ads for added transparency, something that was missing in the 2016 US elections which led to foreign operatives exploiting advertisement campaigns for their own political agenda.

Facebook has received a lot of negative publicity for its failure to curb misinformation campaigns causing the social media platform to actively deal with threats looming over elections all over the world. The website has been acting against misinformation campaigns and removing fake accounts, and it revealed plans for 2019, detailing plans on how it will be dealing with misinformation and transparency.

Political ad transparency tools will be expanded on, and more resources will be channeled by Facebook towards removing fake accounts. The two new war rooms that will be launched in Dublin and Singapore will serve as an added layer of defense against fake news, voter suppression and hate speech. The company will also have its research, engineering, legal and other teams work with each other to ensure outside influences do not affect the elections scheduled for this year.

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