PoliticsNov 1, 2017
Capital OneVenture1
Political Ads on Facebook
Do Facebook employees think the company is doing enough internally to combat the problem of fake news/political advertising from foreign entities, or is the only way to truly solve the problem is to regulate political ads like print, tv and radio?
As far as doing enough, I don’t think anyone is satisfied with where we are today. Do I think we’re on the right path? Yes. Just announced billions for security & safety increases in 2018 in addition to the tone and amount of time leadership is devoting internally to talk about this. As far as the alternative, “is the only way to truly solve the problem is to regulate political ads like print, tv and radio?” This won’t even cut it. North America represents ~12% of our MAU. Even if the US regulates political ads like this, then you still have the rest of the world exposed. And this would only impact ads. Organic stories had larger reach and are a harder problem.
This. Facebook is doing a ton internally, and the work predates it becoming high profile. It's just a monstrously hard set of problems that no one has yet solved.