By Seans Evins, Head of Politics & Government Outreach, EMEA and Christine Grahn, Public Policy Manager, Sweden
When it comes to elections around the world, we understand the responsibility and role Facebook plays, which is why protecting the integrity of elections on the platform is a top priority for us.
6.3 million Swedes come to Facebook every month. We see people discussing things that matter to them, including politics, and we see politicians engaging in dialogue with voters. Used this way, Facebook supports civic engagement and helps connecting citizens with those who represent them.
But it has also become clear that our platform can be abused by those who intend to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. Since the 2016 US election, we have learned important lessons and have evolved our approach around elections. We have made many significant investments in both people and technology to make the misuse of our platform much harder and have successfully deployed these new tools and approaches in recent European elections in France, Germany and Italy.
Our efforts are focused on the following areas: combatting foreign interference, cracking down on fake accounts, reducing the distribution of false news, increasing ads transparency, and supporting an informed electorate.
Working with the Public Authorities and Experts
When it comes to combatting foreign interference, our security team is looking ahead of each upcoming election and we are working with both external experts and governments to understand the actors involved and the specific risks in each country. In Sweden, we are working with public authorities such as MSB (the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency – Swedish: Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap, MSB) and Valmyndigheten to see how we can help to protect the integrity and security of the Swedish elections.
In addition, we have shared tips for safety and security during elections periods with Swedish political parties and Members of Parliament to help them understand how their accounts could be abused and how they can protect them. We have also set up dedicated channels for these officials for security related issues in the context of the Swedish election.
Fighting Fake Accounts
We believe that many bad actors on Facebook are hiding behind false identities. Over the past year, we have continuously improved at finding and disabling fake accounts and we now block millions of fake accounts each day at the point of creation before they can spread any misinformation. We have been able to do this thanks to advances in machine learning, which have allowed us to find suspicious behaviors – without assessing the content itself.
Reducing the Spread of False News
We know that people want to see accurate information on Facebook and so do we. We have introduced several measures to help curb the spread of false news. Because most false news is economically motivated, we are going after economic incentives, banning sites that regularly run false news from using our ads products, so they can’t make money. We know we cannot do this alone, so we are working with third-party fact-checkers, which are part of Poynter Institute’s international fact-checking network. When independent fact-checkers rate the accuracy of stories on Facebook, it allows us to reduce the distribution of stories rated as false by an average of 80%.
Additionally, we are planning to share tips with Swedish Facebook users for spotting and reporting false news, in a similar way as we have done in several other countries around the world.
Increasing Ads Transparency
We have taken several steps to increase the transparency of ads, including recently building a tool called View Ads, which is available in Sweden and across the world. View Ads allows everyone to see all the different messages an advertiser or a political actor is running – regardless of whether or not a person received the ad or follows the page. This ends dark ads and increases the transparency of political advertising.
Helping People to Connect With Their Candidates
Similarly to our work in the context of other elections across the world, we have been building tools to help people to learn more about the political parties and issues that are important to them. Swedish voters will see information in their news feed to help them prepare for the election. These tools will give them insights into the parties’ positions on key issues, and details of when and where to vote, to help support an informed electorate.
Protecting the integrity of elections will always be a challenge. The challenges that we see will change and we as a company, an industry, and a society have to evolve with them. We are committed to making the investments we need to stay ahead. And we are convinced that we can best defend the integrity and security of elections when we work in collaboration with political parties, elections regulators, governments and academic experts.