Facebook will label news from a state-owned source, and will promote transparency for the origins of its pages, after catching Russia, China and Iran trying to influence elections in 2020.
"We do see today Russia and Iran and China increasingly with more sophisticated tactics are trying to interfere in elections," CEO Mark Zuckerberg told NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview that aired Monday evening on “NBC Nightly News.” "But part of why I'm confident going into 2020 is that we've played a role in defending against interference in every major election around the world since 2016, in France, in Germany, in the E.U. overall, in India, in Mexico, in Brazil.
"We continue to see their tactics are evolving," Zuckerberg added. "Today, what we're basically announcing is that we found a set of campaigns. They are highly sophisticated. They signal that these nation-states intend to be active in the upcoming elections."
Facebook announced its findings and upcoming changes in a blog post on Monday, noting that “In the past year alone, we’ve taken down over 50 networks worldwide, many ahead of major democratic elections.”
The company adds that it removed four account networks “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior. Three of them originated in Iran and one in Russia. They targeted the US, North Africa and Latin America. We have identified these manipulation campaigns as part of our internal investigations into suspected Iran-linked inauthentic behavior, as well as ongoing proactive work ahead of the US elections.”
Facebook then announced “Facebook Protect,” which will “further secure the accounts of elected officials, candidates, their staff and others who may be particularly vulnerable to targeting by hackers and foreign adversaries.”
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