Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network giant will start verifying every advertiser seeking to run political ads on its platform. It will also require all users who manage large pages to verify their identities or locations.
In a blog post on Friday, Zuckerberg said, “This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way.”
He noted that the United States, Pakistan. Mexico, India, and Brazil more countries are having elections next year. He emphasized that supporting positive discourse and preventing interference in these elections are his top priorities for 2018.
Earlier this week, Facebook eliminated more than 270 pages and accounts operated by Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian organization. The social network giant found that the Russian IRA spread divisive content and interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook deployed new AI tools after discovering the Russian interference in 2016. As a result, the social network giant identified and removed tens of thousands of Fake accounts leading up to the 2017 French, German, and Alabama Senate special elections.
