Facebook aims to fight 'false news' during New Brunswick election

Facebook Canada is taking several steps aimed at curbing instances of "false news" during the 2018 New Brunswick election.

The initiatives were announced in a briefing to news media before the election officially gets underway Thursday.

Kevin Chan, the head of public policy for Facebook Canada, said the steps are extensions of ones announced by Facebook about a year ago.

"Ultimately, safeguarding our democratic processes is a job for all of us," Chan said.

"While we cannot, and do not, do this work alone, we are committed to making Facebook a force for good in democracy."

Chan said that while much of this work was being done to prepare for the 2019 federal election, the social media platform started work on the plan in 2017 with several provincial elections in mind.

Province not immune

New Brunswick is a relatively small jurisdiction compared to the United States, where co-ordinated efforts to spread false information were prevalent, but political scientist Jamie Gillies says New Brunswick isn't immune.

"Every election is prone to efforts to spread false news," said Gillies, a professor of communications and public policy at St. Thomas University.  

"So far, Canada has been relatively lucky in avoiding widespread attempts to use social media to foster false narratives," Gillies said.

"But that doesn't mean it won't happen or that organized groups will [not] utilize social media to target voters."

Hotlines and notifications

Steps Facebook Canada has implemented include launching a hotline for political parties to report suspected hacks, giving users the ability to view all ads emanating from a particular page, and launching a third-party fact-checking service with Agence France-Presse to detect false news.

"Stories they rate as false have their distribution reduced in News Feed, dropping future views on average by more than 80 per cent," Chan said.

One of their challenges is that they are trying to address the spread of false news while political marketers and advertisers continuously find new ways to use the platforms.- Jamie Gillies, St. Thomas University professor

"Facebook will also send notifications to anyone who has shared the false story advising them that the story has been fact-checked."

Gillies said the effectiveness of this could be challenged by the diversity of sources people receive their news from.

"If Facebook is an individual's primary source for news information, there is always a chance that they are already in a news filter bubble which will reinforce their beliefs," he said.

"That is the nature of Facebook's and other platform's algorithms. They pump up what individuals already agree with and push down contrary views. Social media in general probably reinforces belief systems rather than challenging them."

False news vs. free speech

Chan says Facebook has a three-pronged approach to fighting false news: removing content that violates community standards, reducing the distribution of content that doesn't violate those standards but "undermines the authenticity of our platform," and informing people if stories in their news feed have been labelled as false news.

Gillies said social media platforms have to "walk a fine line between preventing false news attacks and free speech rules," and this will be difficult.

"One of their challenges is that they are trying to address the spread of false news while political marketers and advertisers continuously find new ways to use the platforms," said Gillies.  

"Facebook is now facing the problem of having a wildly successful and ubiquitous platform used for nefarious purposes and this is going to require fine-tuning until Facebook users feel they get it right."

Chan said the system Facebook has put in place isn't perfect, but it is promising.

"We've seen promising results with elections in France, Germany, the special elections in Alabama, and Mexico, where we saw our tools were working to address misinformation and fake accounts," he said.

"With these efforts, we feel we are moving in the right direction."