Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook in an ‘arms race’ on election meddling

Facebook’s
founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Reuters/Charles Platiau

• Facebook is in an “arms race” in its efforts to protect
  elections from outside interference, according to CEO Mark
  Zuckerberg.
• In a Washington Post op-ed, he said it will take the
  “combined forces of the US private and public sectors” to
  protect American democracy from sophisticated bad
  actors.
• He said Facebook’s job is to “amplify the good and
  mitigate the bad” on its platform.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is involved in
an “arms race” as it seeks to snuff out election interference on
its platform.

Writing in The Washington Post
before his second-in-command, COO Sheryl Sandberg, gives evidence
to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Zuckerberg
said it will take the “combined forces of the US private and
public sectors” to protect American democracy from increasingly
sophisticated and well-funded bad actors.

The Facebook founder used the piece to cover well-trodden ground
about the firm’s efforts to stamp out election interference,
including removing more than a billion fake accounts and
increasing transparency about who’s running political adverts on
the social network.

But it was Zuckerberg’s view that it will take cooperation
between tech firms and the government to protect elections that
caught the eye. In an opinion piece on Zuckerberg’s Washington
Post op-ed, Business Insider’s Tech Editor
Alexei Oreskovic compared the conundrum to banking bailouts
during the financial crisis a decade ago.

“Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, are scrambling to
contain a problem that happened on their turf, thanks to a system
they created and which has been immensely profitable for them,”
he said. “Unlike the banks, the internet companies did not
consciously create a toxic product with a purely financial
motive. But the system they created allowed a toxic byproduct to
spread, while they largely looked the other way.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook’s job is to “amplify the good and
mitigate the bad” on its platform. He added that the firm has
made progress ahead of the US midterms in November, and
“investments we continue to make in people and technology will
help us improve even further.”

His comment piece is the culmination of a PR blitz ahead of the
Congressional hearing. Facebook spoke to NBC News about
its midterm election “war room” earlier this week, while
Head of Cybersecurity Policy,
Nathaniel Gleicher, told CNN about his role as Facebook’s “top
troll hunter.”