Facebook, Germany to Collaborate Against Election Interference
January 20 2019 - 12:53PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Germano
MUNICH -- Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg
said the company will work with the German ministry for information
security in a broad effort to guide policy here and throughout
Europe on election interference.
The collaboration will build upon previous work between the
social network and the regulator during the 2017 federal elections
in Germany, Ms. Sandberg said. The effort is part of continued work
by Facebook to strengthen its platform against interference.
The Integrity & Security Initiative will be a cooperation
between Facebook, the German office and other companies and
research partners, Ms. Sandberg said, ahead of European Union
parliamentary elections this spring. The German cybersecurity
watchdog will spearhead the initiative, a person familiar with the
matter said.
A spokesman for the German Federal Office for Information
Security didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. It
wasn't immediately clear which other companies or researchers may
be participating in the initiative.
Ms. Sandberg has come under fire from investors, regulators and
users in recent months for a series of management missteps,
including criticism of Facebook's handling of Russia's interference
in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, though the company's board
of directors affirmed its support for her in a letter in
December.
Speaking on Sunday at the DLD Conference on digitization,
business, and culture in Munich, Ms. Sandberg emphasized that the
company has removed thousands of accounts as it works to prevent
election interference.
Facebook had been focused on preventing phishing and hacking
attempts in 2016, she said, but "what we didn't understand was a
new and more insidious threat: rather than states trying to take
people's data, they were trying to sow disinformation and dissent
into societies. Now that we know what this threat is, we've built
up big defenses against it."
The work against attempts to influence elections on Facebook is
one of five areas the social network is working to improve, Ms.
Sandberg said, including investing in safety and security, cracking
down on fake accounts and misinformation, user control of their own
information and improving Facebook's transparency.
Facebook has also come under scrutiny in Germany for its
data-collection practices. In 2017, the national federal cartel
office released preliminary findings that accused the social
network of abusing its dominant market position to collect data
from users. A final decision by the antitrust enforcer hasn't been
released.
Write to Sara Germano at sara.germano@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 20, 2019 12:38 ET (17:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024