Facebook on Thursday announced a new online appeal for the electorate to facilitate mail voting and restrict incorrect information related to the election before the November presidential election.
The move comes as President Trump has stepped up mail-mail voting attacks and made unfounded accusations that it can lead to widespread fraud.
The company’s new voting data center, which will be presented on Facebook and Instagram, is designed as a “one-stop shop,” according to Facebook, where Americans can register to vote, verify voting data, and log in as voting agents. Facebook had in the past announced its intention to enroll more than 4 million new voters until Election Day.
“People are naturally involved in the effect that an overcrowded polling station can have on their physical condition and security, and this has already led many states to replace their voting procedure by expanding early and mail voting options,” Naomi Gleit, Facebook’s vice president of products and social media, said in a call with reporters. “Ultimately, we need to help every eligible voter in the United States who are using our platform to vote this year.”
Gleit said the center’s donations would be replaced over time, prioritizing early voting data and registration now and closer to polling day, advice on mail voting for others looking for crowded polling places. The data center will also allow state and local election officials to send updates and alerts directly to the electorate through the platform.
To stop the spread of erroneous data, Facebook said it would provide verified data in partnership with the Bipartisan Policy Center on issues such as mail voting, timing of election effects, and how the COVID-19 pandemic may be just the electoral process.
Like other social media platforms, by adding Twitter and YouTube, Facebook first plunged into controversy in 2016 after it was revealed that the Russian government had engaged in a broad crusade of coordinated interference aimed at sowing chaos, confusion over the election, and undermining Secretary Clinton’s policy. Candidacy. Moscow’s crusades of influence on social media have been designed in particular to exploit divisive political problems such as race, weapons and religion. After the election, Oxford University researchers estimated that 126 million Facebook users and 20 million Instagram users were affected by that content.
On Thursday, Facebook said it is combating campaigns of opposition to foreign influence on its platform through Russia and other actors, as well as the un-authentic coordinated conduct followed by national groups.
The company’s cybersecurity policy chief, Nathaniel Gleicher, has known 3 types of potential threats that Facebook said was tracking in 2020: attempts to suppress participation through fake data, attempts to reveal misleading data during the vote counting process, and possible hacking and filtering. scenarios that, he said, “a diversity of actors” could see in 2020.
“Providing accurate data to the electorate is one of the most productive vaccines that oppose influence operations,” Gleicher said. “We need to make sure that other people have the latest and most authoritative data on the initial effects on election night and beyond.”
On Wednesday, primary generation and social media companies, adding to Facebook, said in a set that they had met with various government agencies for percentages of data on the types of activities they had noticed on their respective platforms and to talk about “long-term convention preparations.” . ” and make scenario plans similar to election results. “The Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention are scheduled to take place in the last two weeks of August.
“We will continue to keep an eye on those issues and meet regularly before the November election,” he said, which also includes Google, Twitter, Reddit, Microsoft, LinkedIn and many others. The organization met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI, all of whom have sought to coordinate electoral security efforts with primary-generation corporations since 2018.
“The explanation for why we talk about conventions is that … Critical civic moments like this can be a magnet for a complex operation,” Gleicher said, “and at a time like this where conventions will be different from what they once were. Because they’ll be online, we have to ask ourselves, “Does this replace our stance? Do you create new hazards or mitigate them? “”
“This is the kind of discussion we had,” he said.