Facebook will encourage users to register to vote through a partnership with TurboVote, has partnered with the International Republican Institute and the National Non-Profit Democratic Institute to monitor interference from foreign elections, and will publish a weekly report of trends and problems leaving its new file of political announcements. Facebook has also confirmed that its electoral integrity war room is operational and the team is now "working as a red team" to react to problematic scenarios such as an increase in voter suppression content.
These were the main announcements of today's briefing call between Facebook's electoral integrity team and reporters.
Facebook's voter registration campaign will also be associated with TurboVote, which Instagram announced yesterday will help it with a similar initiative
Much of the call reviewed Facebook's past efforts, but it also took time to focus in the upcoming Brazilian elections. There, Facebook has committed to more than 1,000 prosecutors, judges and employees to establish a dialogue with the electoral authorities. He teamed up with three inspectors in the country and worked with them on Messenger bots such as "Fatima" and "Projeto Lupe" that can help people detect false news.
The voter registration campaign reflects the Instagram plan announced yesterday to Work with TurboVote to push users to registration information through ads. Facebook says it will also remind people to vote on Election Day and allow them to share with friends that "I voted." One concern is that voter registration and Facebook's voting efforts could unequally benefit a political party, for example, those with a base of middle-aged voters who might be young enough to use Facebook but not so young. who abandoned it on YouTube and Snapchat. If Facebook can not show that the efforts are fair, the momentum could become a talking point for members of Congress anxious to paint the social network as partial against their party.
Partnerships with Institutes that do not operate nationally are designed "To understand what they are seeing on the ground in elections" around the world, Facebook can move faster to safeguard their systems, says Katie Harbath, director of Global Politics and Government Outreach on Facebook. Here, Facebook admits that this problem is too big to tackle alone. Beyond working with independent fact inspectors and government election commissions, you are entrusting nonprofit organizations with your eyes and ears on the ground.
The war room is not yet finished, according to a New York Times story published in the middle of the press call. Still under construction in a central corridor between two of the buildings at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, it will accommodate approximately 20 of the 300 Facebook employees working on electoral integrity. It will have screens that display the panels on the information that flows through Facebook to help the team identify and respond quickly to false news increases or false accounts.
In general, Facebook is doing its homework to be ready for a "hot moment," the last day before the electoral stage "and will not be surprised with bare feet," says Facebook's product management director, Greg. Marra. He says that Facebook is "being much more proactive and building systems to look for problems so they do not become big problems in our platform." Samidh Chakrabarti, director of product management for Elections and Civic Participation of Facebook, said that this is "One of the problems". the greatest efforts between teams that we've seen. "