Facebook Launches 'War Room' Ahead Of Midterm Elections To Combat 'Fake News'
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS/CNN) — Facebook is gearing up for the 2018 midterms by hoping to avoid another spurt of misinformation on their platform. The social media giant created a war room to fight to protect the facts.
The company says it has hired thousands of new moderators, invested in artificial intelligence, enlisted the help of former U.S. intelligence officials, and brought in new rules for political advertising — all in an effort to tackle a misinformation crisis.
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Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's director of elections and head of civic engagement, told CNN that the war room was "really the culmination of two years of massive investments we've made both in people and technology to ensure that our platforms are safe and secure for elections. So it builds upon work that we've done to crack down on fake accounts, on combating the spread of fake news on our platforms."
Chakrabarti said the trolls are getting more sophisticated.
"We know that the bad actors out there who are looking to interfere in elections, they are definitely well funded," he said. "They're committed and they are getting increasingly sophisticated. So as one example, I think they've been getting better at being able to mask the location that they're coming from."
In most cases the company's moderators and team leaders make decisions about content that may violate the platform's policy, Chakrabarti said. However, if an issue arises that is "particularly nuanced," it may be considered by the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Facebook has been under fire since the Russian interference manipulated the 2016 election.
With the election day just three weeks, the war room will be operating 24/7.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. CNN contributed to this report.)