Facebook is leveraging its vast resources to help protect the 2020 election against the kind of massive manipulation and disinformation efforts that the platform failed to act on in 2016.
October 27,2020 Facebook is leveraging its vast resources to help protect the 2020 election against the kind of massive manipulation and disinformation efforts that the platform failed to act on in 2016. The moves come with Facebook taking intense criticism from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the British consultancy hijacked personal data from tens of millions of Americans to help Donald Trump’s campaign, and for enabling foreign influence campaigns including from Russia four years ago. Here are some of the measures Facebook has taken to avoid a repeat of the 2016 fiasco and to deliver authoritative information: Voter participation After being accused of enabling „voter suppression“ efforts in 2016, Facebook has set a goal of helping register at least four million voters this year and on Monday said it exceeded that with 4.4 million registrations. The social network used by more than 200 million Americans is delivering reminders to people’s feeds and offering links on how and where to vote. It is also removing posts which seek to discourage going to the polls or spreading false information such as that voting centers are risky for coronavirus infections. Facebook also pledged to remove posts that seek to intimidate voters, and took down a video from Donald Trump Jr.
