Facebook in new initiatives to tackle Cambridge Analytica fallout
10 Apr 2018
Facebook has started telling its users if their information had been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a research firm hired by US President Donald Trump during the elections.
The users have also started getting notifications relating to protecting their information. The social network has been facing huge opposition since the Cambridge Analytica scam surfaced. A #DeleteFacebook movement has taken shape and the company is battling it continuously.
It has announced a new initiative “to help provide independent, credible research about the role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally. It will be funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Democracy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John S. and James L Knight Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
A group of scholars will define the research agenda, solicit proposals for independent research on a range of different topics and manage a peer review process to select scholars who will receive funding for their research, as well as access to privacy-protected datasets from Facebook which they can analyse.
According to Facebook, this is an important new model for partnerships between industry and academia. “The last two years have taught us that the same Facebook tools that help politicians connect with their constituents - and different communities debate the issues they care about - can also be misused to manipulate and deceive,” said the company.
It claims to have made ‘real progress’ since Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election in fighting fake news, as well as combating foreign interference, in elections in France, Germany, Alabama and Italy.
“But there is much more to do - and we don’t have all the answers,” says a Facebook release. “This initiative will enable Facebook to learn from the advice and analysis of outside experts so we can make better decisions - and faster progress.”
Importantly, the goal is to understand Facebook’s impact on upcoming elections in India, Brazil, Mexico and the US midterms, and to inform its future product and policy decisions.