Facebook establishing task force for 2019 India elections

Facing the uphill task of tackling electionrelated interference on its platform as India gets ready for polls next year Facebook on Saturday said it is establishing a task force comprising hundreds of people in the country to prevent bad actors from abusing its platformWith the 2019 elections coming we are pulling together a group of specialists to work together with political parties Richard Allan Vice President of Policy for Europe the Middle East and Africa EMEA told the mediaThe team will have security specialists and content specialists among others who will try to understand all the possible forms of electionrelated abuse in India added Allan during a workshop on Facebooks community standards in the capitalAllan explained that while the disinformation linked to realworld violence is checked by the team mandated to maintain Facebooks community standards other forms of disinformation are handled by a different team of fact checkersThe challenge for the task force in India would be to distinguish between real political news and political propaganda Allan noted adding that the team would be very much based in the country and would consist of both existing human resources working on these issues within the company and new recruitsFacebook came under the intense scrutiny of policymakers in the US after allegations of Russialinked accounts using the social networking platform to spread divisive messages during the 2016 presidential election surfacedSince then it has stepped up efforts to check abuse of its platform by bringing in more transparency in the conduct of its businesses including in advertisement policiesEchoing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs earlier comments on elections across the world Allan said the social media platform wants to help countries around the world including India to conduct free and fair electionsIn April Zuckerberg said Facebook will ensure that its platform is not misused to influence elections in India and elsewhereOur goals are to understand Facebooks impact on upcoming elections like Brazil India Mexico and the US midterms and to inform our future product and policy decisions he told US lawmakers during a hearingFacebook uses a combination of technology including Machine Learning ML and Artificial Intelligence AI and reports from its community to identify violating content on the platformThe reports are reviewed by members of its Community Operations team who review content in over 50 languages in the world including 12 from IndiaBy the end of 2018 we will have 20000 people working on these issues double the number we had at the same time last year he saidWe are also working to enhance the work we do to proactively detect violating content Allan saidCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Except for the change in the headline the story has been provided ASIS AS AVAILABLE without any verification or editing from our side Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever