Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week preached his company's commitment to election integrity. This week, he showed it off.
。 Facebook on Wednesday revealed the four main ways it believed it played a role prior to, during, and after the federal election in Germany last weekend. In a。 blog post。blog post。 SEE ALSO:What the Facebook/Russia controversy is actually about 。 Facebook's efforts included:。 Removing tens of thousands of fake accounts in Germany
。 Showing related articles that could include opposing viewpoints。 Providing the option to explore different party perspectives on issues。 Cooperating with authorities on online security issues
。 Supporting media partners in the distribution of election information。 For Facebook, these product updates are unprecedented and come amid controversy on Facebook's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.。 Shortly after the election, Trump campaign fundraiser Gary Coby referred to a Facebook employee as an "MVP" of the election and Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale told
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。 Thanks for signing up!。 Facebook has had to come in on the defense, hard and fast. Last week, Zuckerberg hosted a Facebook Live where he shared that the company was handing over 3,000 Russian-linked ads to lawmakers and that it would work to self-regulate itself on political ad spending.
。 Facebook playing a role in an election isn't anything new, but it's now starting to be more transparent on what exactly transpires on the platform. It did increase its efforts to combat fake news for the French election and the Kenyan election and was public about those decisions. But such a blog post as lengthy and clear as Wednesday's is unprecedented for the company.。 Of course, just because Facebook made more efforts to combat fake news and fake accounts doesn't mean the election was authentically portrayed on Facebook. 。 "These actions did not eliminate misinformation entirely in this election – but they did make it harder to spread, and less likely to appear in people’s News Feeds. Studies concluded that the level of false news was low," Richard Allan, Facebook's VP of public policy EMEA, wrote in the blog post.。Facebook is trying to do a better job at speaking on the positive roles it can play during an election and attempting to do more of it. 。 For example, Facebook created more civic engagement tools for users ahead of the German election. Facebook users in Germany were "given the option to compare the major political parties‘ perspectives" after they clicked on an article about the election in their News Feeds. Such a comparison tool was not available during the U.S. presidential election and is reminiscent of the。 's Blue Feed, Red Feed tool.。
Wall Street Journal。
Wall Street Journal
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