Facebook is launching an “independent election research commission” that it says will help fight misinformation, fake news and election manipulations.
The international research initiative is backed by a handful of scholars, and will include the Democracy Fund and the Charles Koch Foundation.
On his Facebook page, embattled CEO Mark Zuckerberg said early Monday the commission stems from his 2018 priority “in making sure Facebook prevents interference and misinformation in elections.”
The commission, Zuckerberg said, will “solicit research on the effects of social media on elections and democracy” from leading scholars, who will “hold us accountable for making sure we protect the integrity of these elections on Facebook.”
In a separate blog post, top Facebook officials Elliot Schrage and David Ginsberg said they want to know the impact Facebook could have on upcoming elections in places such as Brazil, India, Mexico — and in the U.S. this November.
“The initial term of the commission will be one year and membership will be determined in the coming weeks. We are keen to have a broad range of experts — with different political outlooks, expertise and life experiences, gender, ethnicity and from a broad range of countries,” Schrage and Ginsberg wrote.
One of the biggest goals of the effort is protecting privacy, they said.
“Facebook and our funding partners recognize the threat presented by the recent misuse of Facebook data, including by an academic associated with Cambridge Analytica,” they wrote. “At the same time, we believe strongly that the public interest is best served when independent researchers have access to information. And we believe that we can achieve this goal while ensuring that privacy is preserved and information kept secure.”
Zuckerberg will be on Capitol Hill this week, meeting with lawmakers behind closed doors as well as giving public testimony to a handful of committees. His appearance comes amid the fallout from revelations that research firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the information of more than 87 million Facebook users ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The British-based company worked with the Trump campaign.
Facebook officials were in Washington in late 2017 to answer questions about how Russian trolls use their platform during the 2016 election. However, lawmakers have been less than pleased on how transparent the social media giant has been in describing what changes it will make for upcoming elections.
“Looking back, it’s clear we were too slow identifying election interference in 2016, and we need to do better in future elections,” Zuckerberg said Monday.
Monday’s announcement is a complete 180 from comments the Facebook CEO made in November, when he called the idea that fake news influenced the U.S. presidential election “a pretty crazy idea.”
