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Facebook admits social media
threat to democracy

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Facebook acknowledged on Monday that the explosion of social media
poses a potential threat to democracy, pledging to tackle the problem
head-on and turn its powerful platform into a force for "good."
The comments from the world's biggest social network were its latest
response to intense criticism for failing to stop the spread of
misinformation among its two billion users - most strikingly leading
up to the 2016 US election.
In a blog post, Facebook civic engagement chief Samidh Chakrabarti
said he was "not blind to the damage that the internet can do to even
a well-functioning democracy."
"In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognise how bad actors
were abusing our platform," he said. "We're working diligently to
neutralise these risks now."
The post - one in a series dubbed "hard questions" - was part of a
high-profile push by Facebook to reboot its image, including with the
announcement last week that it would let users "rank" the
trustworthiness of news sources to help stem the flow of false news.
"We're as determined as ever to fight the negative influences and
ensure that our platform is unquestionably a source for democratic
good," said Katie Harbath, Facebook's head of global politics and
government outreach, in an accompanying statement.
Facebook, along with Google and Twitter, faces global scrutiny for
facilitating the spread of bogus news - some of it directed by Russia
- ahead of the US election, the Brexit vote and other electoral
battles.
The social network has concluded that Russian actors created 80,000
posts that reached around 126 million people in the United States over
a two-year period.
"It's abhorrent to us that a nation-state used our platform to wage a
cyberwar intended to divide society," Chakrabarti said.
"This was a new kind of threat that we couldn't easily predict, but we
should have done better. Now we're making up for lost time," he said.
Chakrabarti pointed at Facebook's pledge last year to identify the
backers of political advertisements - while also stressing the need to
tread carefully, citing the example of rights activists who could be
endangered if they are publicly identified on social media.
He also elaborated on the decision to let Facebook's users rank the
"trustworthiness" of news sources, saying: "We don't want to be the
arbiters of truth, nor do we imagine this is a role the world would
want for us."
This article was originally published on:
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/money/techcrisis/facebook-admits-social-media-threat-to-democracy/ar-AAv53bj?li=AA4RE6&ocid=ientp
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References | |
1 Statistics on the Internet
growth in Sri Lanka | |
http://www.trc.gov.lk/images/pdf/ | |
statis_sep_2012.doc | |
2.The Dragon Research Group (DRG) | | |
http://www.dragonresearchgroup.org/ |
3.TSUBAME (Internet threat
monitoring system) from JPCERT | CC | |
https://www.jpcert.or.jp/english/tsubame/ | |
4.Shadowserver Foundation | | | | | | | | | |
http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/ | |
5. Team Cymru | |
http://www.team-cymru.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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Facebook to give you more control over your
data | | |
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Month in Brief | |
Facebook Incidents
Reported to Sri Lanka CERT|CC in December 2017 | |
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Statistics - Sri Lanka CERT|CC | |
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Malicious Chrome and Firefox extensions block
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'...Malicious Chrome and Firefox extensions that block their removal
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