- Facebook withdraws 2.2M ads and 120K posts, says a top company executive
- It slammed warning labels on 150M inaccurate information
- The company announced that it is taking steps to limit political ads as well
Facebook, Inc. is an American social media agglomerate corporation based in Menlo Park, California. Back in 2004, the company came into existence. It has been 16 years now. Since then, it is one of the largest social networking websites with a massive global audience.
Even so, with its different platforms and services, it is one of the most toxic social media platforms. This is because exceedingly large numbers of information on Facebook turns out to be fake. In the course of a few years, the company has faced a lot of criticism for its misleading posts.
However, on Sunday the company announced its concern towards Facebook Community. The company bragged itself for the kind of integrity it brought for its users.
A top Facebook executive said that the company is taking action to prevent misinformation spread. It has withdrawn 2.2 ads and 120K posts till now. The posts from Instagram are also on this list. The company eliminated them, as they were trying to “obstruct voting”. Elections are about to start and the company doesn’t want any kind of hullabaloo.
How did Facebook limit misinformation spread?
Facebook’s VP of global affairs and communication said that the company’s use of AI has “made it possible”. It deleted billions of posts and fake accounts even before they are reported by users”.
Supplementary to its automated moderation system, Facebook employs a dedicated team of workers said Clegg. The team works to take safety and security issues. The company is collaborating with dozens of media outlets to help filter out election misinformation.
“Thirty-five thousand of employees take care of the security of our platforms and contribute to elections. We have established partnerships with 70 specialised media including five in France. This is for the verification of information”, said Clegg.
He also added that Facebook tracks record on all advertisements and their funding for seven years. This is “to ensure transparency.” All of this is good, but do they feel like too little too late. It’s like Facebook wants to extinguish fires after it’s already spread and burnt the whole forest.
Though in the 2016 elections Facebook introduced some measures to curb misinformation. It introduced fact-checking programs and began employing third-party fact-checkers. Although whether its efforts actually worked is debatable.
Snopes and ABC are two major media outlets that assisted Facebook in its fact-check program. Since then they have abandoned the partnership.
Recently, the company announced that it’s taking steps to limit political ads as the elections are approaching. It has promised to stop accepting ads the week before election day. Facebook will temporarily disable all ads focused on political and social issues after polls close.