To prevent possible interference in the upcoming 2020 US presidential elections through social media, Facebook has formed a new task force to handle the problem. The social media giant announced on Sunday that it has set up an election monitoring center that will mainly be focusing on social media activities during the upcoming election campaign.
The move by the social media conglomerate is crucial if it wants to prevent another scandal like the one that happened during the last election. The scandal had placed the company under scrutiny by various regulatory agencies around the world. The new task force will apparently be chaired by the firm's COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Facebook has been under a lot of pressure from various regulators and civil rights groups, who have argued that the company is simply not doing enough to curb "anti-democratic" tactics using its social media platform. These tactics include the spread of fake news, voter intimidation, and information suppression.
The company's decision to form the task force comes at the heels of other similar strategies are aimed at showing the world that it can responsibly handle its own platform. This included strategies to manage the spread of hate speech and measures to safeguard user data.
The formation of the task force also comes at a crucial time as the United States enters its pivotal campaign season.
Despite its various strategies, some civil rights groups have questioned the long-term durability of Facebook's efforts stating that the company would have to do more and build upon what it has already implemented.
Apart from the task force, Facebook has also promised to implement a number of additional policies to prevent election interference. These policies include the banning of negative ads, such as those that attempt to persuade users not to vote for a particular candidate.
A new policy is also planned to be launched within the platform in the fall. The policy will ban any content that contains misinformation about upcoming census reports. Facebook apparently intends to treat the upcoming election's census as if it were the actual elections.
Another measure, which is aimed to prevent discrimination, will restrict ads and job offers that primarily target users based on their age, gender, or ethnicity. Filtering out the sea of information on its platform is understandably very difficult, which is why Facebook is planning to use artificial intelligence technologies to help it out. According to Sanberg, the company the use of AI will be a prominent tool that will be used to catch disinformation.
