Facebook
will push users to register to vote through a partnership with TurboVote, has
partnered with the International Republican Institute and National Democratic
Institute nonprofits to monitor foreign election interference and will publish
a weekly report of trends and issues emerging from its new political ads
archive.
Facebook has also confirmed that its election integrity war room is up
and running and the team is now “red teaming” how it would react to problem
scenarios such as a spike in voter suppression content.
These were
the major announcements from today’s briefing call between Facebook’s election
integrity team and reporters.
Facebook’s
voter registration drive will also partner with TurboVote, which Instagram
announced yesterday will assist it with a similar initiative
Much of the
call reviewed Facebook’s past efforts, but also took time to focus on the
upcoming Brazilian election. There, Facebook has engaged with over 1,000
prosecutors, judges and clerks to establish a dialog with election authorities.
It’s partnered with three fact-checkers in the country and worked with them on
Messenger bots like “Fátima” and “Projeto Lupe” that can help people spot fake
news.
The voter
registration drive mirrors Instagram’s plan announced yesterday to work with
TurboVote to push users to registration info via ads. Facebook says it also
will remind people to vote on election day and let them share with friends that
“I voted.” One concern is that voter registration and voting efforts by
Facebook could unevenly advantage one political party, for instance those with
a base of middle-aged constituents who might be young enough to use Facebook
but not so young that they’ve abandoned it for YouTube and Snapchat. If
Facebook can’t prove the efforts are fair, the drive could turn into a talking
point for congressional members eager to paint the social network as biased
against their party.
The
partnerships with the Institutes that don’t operate domestically are designed
“to understand what they’re seeing on the ground in elections” around the world
so Facebook can move faster to safeguard its systems, says Facebook’s director
of Global Politics and Government Outreach Team Katie Harbath. Here, Facebook
is admitting this problem is too big to tackle on its own. Beyond working with
independent fact-checkers and government election commissions, it’s tasking
nonprofits to help be its eyes and ears on the ground.
The war room
isn’t finished yet, according to a story from The New York Times published in
the middle of the press call. Still under construction in a central hallway
between two of Facebook’s Menlo Park HQ buildings, it will fit about 20 of
Facebook’s 300 staffers working on election integrity. It will feature screens
showing dashboards about information flowing through Facebook to help the team
quickly identify and respond to surges in false news or fake accounts.
Overall,
Facebook is trying to do its homework so it’s ready for a “heat of the moment,
last day before the election scenario” and won’t get caught flat-footed, says
Facebook’s director of Product Management for News Feed Greg Marra. He says
Facebook is “being a lot more proactive and building systems to look for
problems so they don’t become big problems on our platform.” Facebook’s
director of Product Management for Elections and Civic Engagement Samidh
Chakrabarti noted, this is “one of the biggest cross-team efforts we’ve seen.”
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