Machine learning and AI are used to block fake accounts

Oct 18, 2018 18:21 GMT  ·  By

Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's Director of Product Management, Civic Engagement, announced that the social network had created a physical elections war room designed to help them address fake news in real time.

During September 2018, both the USA and Brazil will organize elections, and Menlo Park decided to gather all their subject-matter experts in the same location to be able to react as quick as possible to any detected issues as fast as possible.

According to Chakrabarti post on Facebook's newsroom, the experts present in their elections war room have expertise in a wide range of fields from threat intelligence, data science, and software engineering to research, community operations and legal teams.

Facebook's war room crew is supported by around 20,000 people who work on identifying and blocking security and safety issues all across the social network.

Experts with relevant experience in discovering and stopping fake news are present in the war room

The war room features a dashboard designed explicitly for monitoring "key elections issues, such as efforts to prevent people from voting, increases in spam, potential foreign interference, or reports of content that violates our policies."

The war room team is capable of tracking all viral content across the entire platform, as well as activity related to the ongoing elections and news coverage of current events.

Facebook's elections war room unit also has a wide range of scenarios and procedures prepared to quickly act when threats such as voter suppression and harassment are identified.

"Our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology is now able to block or disable fake accounts more effectively – the root cause of so many issues," said Chakrabarti. "We’ve increased transparency and accountability in our advertising. And we continue to make progress in fighting false news and misinformation."