Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he is “pretty confident” his company could help prevent attempts to influence the political outcome of the US presidential election later this year.
Zuckerberg tells the BBC in an interview that the social network is now better prepared to counter online misinformation campaigns but admitted Facebook was “behind” during the 2016 election which US President Donald Trump won.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks in New York, October 25, 2019. (AP/Mark Lennihan)
“Countries are going to continue to try and interfere and we are going to see issues like that but we have learnt a lot since 2016 and I feel pretty confident that we are going to be able to protect the integrity of the upcoming elections,” he says.
Zuckerberg describes preventing electoral interference as a “little bit of an arms race” against countries such as Russia, Iran and China.
“We don’t want other governments to try and interfere in elections, so regardless of how effective that is I view it as our job to work with everyone we can to stop that from happening,” he adds.
— AFP
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