Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook would intentionally make political advertising on the platform more transparent after it was revealed $100,000 was purchased for ads from June 2015 to May 2017 by a Russian “troll farm” called the Internet Research Agency, which has promoted pro-Russian propaganda.
“First, let me say this. I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video Thursday. “Facebook’s mission is all about giving people a voice and bringing people closer together. Those are deeply democratic values and we’re proud of them. I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not what we stand for.”
Zuckerberg provided several steps that Facebook will be implementing to prevent interference in elections from occurring again. These steps include displaying information on all the ads a page is running and to what audiences, adding more than 250 people across all teams focused on security and safety for the community, and increasing the sharing of threat information with other tech and security companies.
“The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world,” he said. “That’s why we’ve built teams dedicated to working on election integrity and preventing governments from interfering in the elections of other nations. And as we’ve shared before, our teams have found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that could be attempting to influence elections in many countries, including recently in the French elections.”
Zuckerberg said special counsel Robert Mueller, who is currently heading up the Russia investigation, has been given the information concerning the ads and Congress has been briefed. Additionally, Zuckerberg said Congress will decide how to use the information found and the government will publish the findings once the investigation is complete.
Earlier in the day, Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, said Facebook came to an agreement with congressional investigators to release the ads and some of the information related to them.
“Now, I wish I could tell you we’re going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldn’t be realistic,” he added. “There will always be bad people in the world, and we can’t prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
Facebook is also conducting it’s own investigation and has pledged to work with the U.S. government if more information is discovered.
