Facebook using experience from polls in India to stop abuse ahead of US elections, says Mark Zuckerberg

Noting that next week will certainly be a "test" for Facebook, Zuckerberg said the company will continue "fighting to protect the integrity of the democratic process"

Facebook has said it is using experience from more than 200 different elections around the world including India, to stop the abuse of its platform ahead of US elections.

Apprehending possible social media abuse during the poll, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that next week will certainly be a "test" for Facebook. The company will continue "fighting to protect the integrity of the democratic process".

"These are all changes we have made in the last four years -- and they have helped us protect the integrity of more than 200 different elections around the world, including in the EU, India and Indonesia. And they have been important for stopping abuse ahead of next week's vote in the US," Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call and outlined some of the steps that have been taken.

The company has focused on issues like voter suppression, and has worked closely with experts in the space, including civil rights leaders, he said.

Facebook, US-based social media giant, embroiled in a controversy in India over media reports alleging the social media giant's local unit being biased towards the ruling BJP.

Read: Zuckerberg says US election will be a test of Facebook’s work

Even earlier IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg saying that social media giant is the “latest tool” being used to create “internal divisions and social disturbances” by vested groups.

Narrating issued faced by company on its platform, Zuckerberg said Facebook''s security teams were looking for traditional threats like hacking four years ago, but what it ended up seeing was something new -- coordinated interference campaigns, using fake accounts, that tried to spread misinformation and discord.

"Since then, we have built the most advanced systems in the world to find and remove these threats, and it shows in the numbers. In the years since, we have taken down more than 100 networks, including from Russia, Iran, and China and we block millions of potentially abusive accounts every day," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg explained that the company has taken steps to make ads transparent and anyone who wants to run a political or social issue ad has to go through its authorisation process first.

"Our policies prohibit misrepresentations of when and how to vote and content meant to intimidate people into not showing up to polling places, like claiming ICE will be there. And we recently expanded these policies to include implicit misrepresentations, like for example, claims that you'll get Covid-19 by voting in person," he said.

From March to mid-October, Facebook has removed more than 1,35,000 pieces of content in the US for breaking these rules, he added.