As India gears up for the elections next year, Facebook, the giant social media platform gears in action with the arduous task dealing with the election-related intervention. The platform stated that it is setting up a task force that consists of “hundreds of people” in the nation to avert bad elements from misusing its platforms.
Richard Allan, Vice-President of Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) stated it to the media in New Delhi, “With the 2019 elections coming, we are pulling together a group of specialists to work together with political parties”.
Allan further added, “The team will have security specialists and content specialists, among others, who will try to understand all the possible forms of election-related abuse in India” while addressing a workshop on “community standards” of Facebook on New Delhi.
He noted, “The challenge for the task force in India would be to distinguish between real political news and political propaganda”. He further added, that the team would be based in the country and would comprise of both human resources working on these issues within the new recruits and the company.
Facebook had earlier come under the radar of the policymakers in the US after the accusations of accounts that were linked to Russia using the social networking platform to spread divisive messages during the 2016 presidential election came up.
Since then it has beefed up its efforts so as to keep a tab on the abuse of its platform by bringing in additional transparency in the conduct of businesses, including in the policies of advertisement.
Resounding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s earlier comments on elections across the world, Allan stated that the social media platform “wants to help countries around the world, including India, to conduct free and fair elections”.
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