Facebook recently revealed that the Russian disinformation campaign reached more than 120 million people in the United States ahead of last year’s presidential election. The campaigns were used to spread divisive views among voters in what had already proven to be a polarizing and charged election atmosphere. As the company continues to take steps to curb the spread of fake news on its platform and to impose additional disclosure requirements on political advertisers, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that he’s “dead serious” about preventing similar foreign interference in U.S. elections in the future.
Zuckerberg revealed in an earnings conference call with investors that Facebook is working with Congress on legislation for political ad-transparency. “I think this could be very good, if done well,” he said regarding the legislation.
Zuckerberg said that he’s upset that the Russians used Facebook to sow mistrust, that what they did is wrong and “we are not going to stand for it.” The Facebook CEO also reiterated a pledge he made earlier to double Facebook’s security staff to 20,000 people.
The company is also going to invest in better artificial intelligence technology to ensure that something like this never happens again. Zuckerberg promises to coordinate with Congress and the intelligence community to rule out any chances of a repeat of the 2016 disinformation campaign.
Filed in . Read more about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Source: bloomberg