Facebook activates election ‘war room’

The social media company is gearing up for the upcoming US Mid-term elections by opening a “war-room” to fight disinformation campaigns. 

Facebook has been heavily criticised for its inaction during the 2016 Presidential Elections when alleged foreign actors manipulated users by spreading misinformation.

Background 

Facebook, a social media and social networking site, was launched by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 along with some of his Harvard roommates. Almost instantly the site was a hit among its users and grew exponentially across the world. As of August 2018, Facebook has more than two billion users monthly.

Facebook’s large user base has prompted them to expand operations and facilities across the world. South Asia’s young and technology-savvy population has encouraged Silicon Valley tech giants like Google and Facebook to invest in the region. The recent scandal with Cambridge Analytica has unveiled Facebook’s unethical practices of user data storage outside of the host country. Their latest effort to combat fake news comes at the heels of intense public and government scrutiny for their inaction during the 2016 Presidential Election foreign hacking scandal.

Analysis 

Facebook has set up a ‘nerve centre’ to combat fake accounts and bogus news stories ahead of upcoming elections. Inside the room are dozens of employees staring intently at their monitors while data streams across giant dashboards. On the walls are posters of the sort Facebook frequently uses to caution or exhort its employees. One reads, “Nothing at Facebook is somebody else’s problem.”

That motto might strike some as ironic, given that the war room was created to counter threats that almost no one at the company, least of all CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took seriously just two years ago — and which the company’s critics now believe pose a threat to democracy. Days after President Donald Trump’s surprise victory, Zuckerberg brushed off assertions that the outcome had been influenced by fictional news stories on Facebook, calling the idea “pretty crazy.”

However, Facebook’s unconcerned attitude shifted as criticism of the company mounted in Congress and elsewhere. Later that year, it acknowledged having run thousands of ads promoting false information placed by Russian agents. Zuckerberg eventually made fixing Facebook his personal challenge for 2018.

The war room is a major part of Facebook’s ongoing repairs. Its technology draws upon the artificial intelligence system Facebook has been using to help identify “inauthentic” posts and user behaviour. Facebook provided a tightly controlled glimpse at its war room to media outlets ahead of the second round of presidential elections in Brazil on Oct. 28 and the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6.

More than 20 different teams now coordinate the efforts of more than 20,000 people — mostly contractors — devoted to blocking fake accounts and fictional news and stopping other abuses on Facebook and its other services. As part of the crackdown, Facebook also has hired fact checkers, including The Associated Press, to vet news stories posted on its social network.

Counterpoint

Facebook defends its war room as an effective weapon against misinformation, although its efforts are still a work in progress. Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's director of elections and civic engagement, acknowledged that some “bugs” prevented Facebook from taking some unspecified actions to prevent manipulation efforts in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election earlier this month. He declined to elaborate.

Assessment 

Our assessment is that Facebook is trying to keep misinformation away from its platform but is struggling to find a sustainable method to do so. It came under heavy scrutiny after the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light and it has been doing everything in its power from losing users. We believe that foreign hackers will try to use Facebook once again before the 2018 Midterms to spread misinformation. However, we also feel that they may employ more covert tactics to avoid raising any red flags in Facebook’s new “war room”.