Facebook vows to protect 'poll integrity' in India, others

WASHINGTON: Facebook has deployed technology tools like artificial intelligence and thousands of people to work on security as the company's "major focus" this year is to protect the integrity of upcoming elections in several countries, including India, on its platform, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said.
Terming 2018 a "big year" for elections, Zuckerberg said Facebook was enhancing its security features to prevent trolls from spreading misinformation. The social media giant has been slammed over a major data breach scandal by Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy linked to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

"In the US Senate Alabama special election last year, we successfully deployed some new artificial intelligence tools that removed Macedonian trolls who were trying to spread information during the election. We now have about 15,000 people working on security and content review and we'll have more than 20,000 by the end of this year," Zuckerberg told reporters during a conference call on Wednesday. "This is going to be a big year for elections ahead with the US midterms and elections in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Hungary and others. This is going to be a major focus for us," Zuckerberg said. "What we need to do is to just track the bad actors really carefully in order to just be able to remove it from Facebook entirely," he added.

Several Indian states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are scheduled to go for polls this year and the general elections are due in a little over a year from now.