Washington: After the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook row, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media giant has said that they will enhance its security features to ensure the integrity of upcoming key elections in countries like India and Brazil, reported the New York Times.
Zuckerberg referred to the artificial intelligence (AI) tools deployed by Facebook to detect fake accounts trying to manipulate news and influence the elections.
Such a tool was deployed for the first time in the French elections in 2017.
“The new A.I. tools we built after the 2016 elections found, I think, more than 30,000 fake accounts that we believe were linked to Russian sources who were trying to do the same kind of tactics they did in the US in the 2016 election. We were able to disable them and prevent that from happening on a large scale in France, he said.
“Last year in 2017 with the special election in Alabama, we deployed some new A.I. tools to identify fake accounts and false news, and we found a significant number of Macedonian accounts that were trying to spread false news, and were able to eliminate those, Zuckerberg said.
This is for the first time that Zuckerberg has publicly talked about Facebook being allegedly used for influencing polls.
“I feel a lot better about the systems now. At the same time, I think Russia and other governments are going to get more sophisticated in what they do, too. So we need to make sure that we up our game, he said.
“This is a massive focus for us to make sure we’re dialed in for not only the 2018 elections in the US, but the Indian elections, the Brazilian elections, and a number of other elections that are going on this year that are really important,” Zuckerberg said.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg, in an interview with the CNN had said that ‘he is really sorry about what happened.’ He also added that he is ready to appear before the Congress.
Zuckerberg addressed the scandal publicly through a Facebook post on Wednesday. He wrote that the company made “mistakes” and outlined how it has changed its policies to make sure that user data is protected.
On Thursday, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton had tweeted that it is time to delete Facebook.
Amid the controversy, The Chief Information Security Officer of Facebook Alex Stamos is planning to leave Facebook by August reported the New York Times.
