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FACEBOOK, INC.Moderator: Tom Reynolds

03-29-18/12:00 p.m. ETConfirmation # 8648926

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FACEBOOK, INC.

Moderator: Tom ReynoldsMarch 29, 201812:00 p.m. ET

Operator: This is Conference # 8648926

Operator: Good morning and welcome to the Review of Facebook’s Ongoing Election Efforts.

There will be prepared remarks and a Q&A to follow. To ask a question after the prepared remarks conclude, please press “star,” “one.”

I’d like to turn the call over to Tom Reynolds from Facebook’s Communication Team, who will kick this off.

Tom Reynolds: Thanks so much and thanks for joining us, everybody. I just want (you to know) real quickly this call is being recorded. As you probably know, Mark announced last fall that we were committed to doing more to protect the integrity of the elections from abuse and from exploitation. We have a number of initiatives underway and we wanted to provide regular updates on the work that we’re doing and the progress that we’re making.

Today we’re going to talk about developments in four areas. Guy is going to -- Guy Rosen is going to introduce those in one moment. But before he does, I just wanted to acknowledge what we aren’t going to talk about. I know there is a lot of news at the moment, but I’d ask that when it’s time for questions, we stick to the subject at hand as these folks are the experts that suited to speak to how we are thinking about elections-related issues.

And with that, let me turn it over to my colleague, Guy Rosen.



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Guy Rosen: Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. I’m Guy Rosen and I help coordinate all of the safety and security work underway here at Facebook. By now everyone knows the story. During the 2016 U.S. election, foreign actors tried to undermine the integrity of the electoral process.

Their attack included taking advantage of open online platforms such as Facebook to divide Americans and to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Now none of us can turn back the clock but we are all responsible for making sure the same kind of attack on democracy does not happen again and we’re taking our role in that effort very, very seriously.

Today we’re going to outline how we’re thinking about elections and give you an update on a number of initiatives designed to protect and promote civic engagement on Facebook. There are four main election security areas that we are working on. They are first combating foreign interference, second removing fake accounts, third increasing ad transparency, and fourth reducing the spread of false news.

This is a comprehensive approach that we deploy in elections around the world and we’re here today to share our thinking about what we’re doing so you can better understand this approach.

Now let me turn it over to Alex.

Alex Stamos: Thanks Guy. Good morning everyone. I am Alex Stamos, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer. And I would like to discuss how we think about different types of misinformation and the adversaries who propagate it.

When you tease apart the overall digital misinformation problem you find multiple types of bad content and many bad actors with different motivations. It is important to match the right approach to these various challenges and that requires not just careful analysis of what has happened, we also have to have the most up to date intelligence to understand completely new types of misinformation.



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The term fake news is used to describe a lot of different types of activity that we would like to prevent. When we study these issues, we first have to define what is actually fake. The most common issues are fake identities. This is when an actor conceals their identity or takes on the identity of another group or individual. Fake audiences so this is the use of tricks to artificially expand an audience or the perception of support for a particular message. False facts, the assertion of false information and false narratives which are intentionally divisive headlines and language that exploit disagreements and sow conflict.

This is the most difficult areas for us as different news outlets and consumers can have completely different opinions on what an appropriate narrative is even if they agree on the facts. Once we have an understanding of the various kinds of fake we need to deal with, we then have to distinguish between the motivations of spreading the information because our ability to combat different actors is based upon preventing their ability to reach their goals.

The most common motivation for organized professional groups is money. The majority of misinformation we have found by both quantity and reach has been created by groups who gained financially by driving traffic to sites they own. When we’re fighting financially motivated actors, our goal is to increase the cost of their operations while driving down their profitability.

This is not wholly unlike how we have countered various types of spammers in the past. The second class of organized actors are the ones who are looking to artificially influence public debate. These cover the spectrum from private but ideologically motivated groups to the fulltime employees of state intelligence services. Their targets might be foreign or domestic and while much of the public discussion has been about countries trying to influence the debate abroad, we also must be on guard for domestic manipulation using some of the same techniques.

Misinformation can also be spread by less organized groups or individuals. These might be people who enjoy causing chaos and disruption who you might call a classic internet troll, or they might be innocent users who share a false story without realizing that the story or the person pushing it are fake.



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Some groups might also have multiple motivations. For example, some ideologically driven groups are also self-funded via the ad money they generate from their sites. Each country we operate in and election we are working to support will have a different range of actors with techniques that are customized for that specific audience. We are looking ahead by studying each upcoming election and working with external experts to understand the actors involved and the specific risks in each country.

We are then using this process to guide how we build and train teams with the appropriate local language and cultural skills. At the end of the day, we’re trying to develop a systematic and comprehensive approach to tackle these challenges and then to map that approach to the needs of each country or election.

Let me turn it now to Samidh to outline some of our specific product efforts.

Samidh Chakrabarti: Thanks, Alex.

I'm Samidh Chakrabarti; I'm a Product Manager here at Facebook. And I lead all of our product work related to election security and civic engagements.

Let me start with our ongoing efforts to fight fake accounts, because that's one of the most frequent ways that we see bad actors trying to hide behind false identities.

Now, over the past year, we've gotten increasingly better at finding and disabling fake accounts. We're now at the point that we block millions of fake accounts each day, at the point of creation, before they can do any harm.

We've been able to do this thanks to advances in machine learning, which has allowed us to find more suspicious behaviors without assessing the content itself.

Now, our work here includes a new investigative tool that we can deploy in the lead up to elections, and I'd love to tell you a little bit about how it works. Rather than wait for reports from our community, we now proactively look for



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potentially harmful types of election related activity, such as pages of foreign origin that are distributing civic content (inauthentically).

And if we find any, we then send these suspicious accounts to be manually reviewed by our security team to see if they violate our community standards or our terms of service. If they do, we can quickly remove them from Facebook.

And this proactive approach has allowed us to move more quickly and has become a really important way for us to prevent misleading or divisive means from going viral.

As Mark briefly mentioned last week, we first piloted this tool last year around the time of the Alabama special Senate election race. By looking specifically for foreign interference, we were able to identify a previously unknown set of Macedonian political spammers that appeared to be financially motivated. We then quickly blocked them from our platform.

We've used this since in many places around the world, including the Italian elections, and will deploy it moving forward for elections, including the U.S. midterms.

Let me close by saying that to support these and other kinds of security initiatives, we're making huge investments both in technology and in talent.

This year, for example, we're doubling the number of people who work on safety issues overall from 10,000 to 20,000. That includes content reviewers, systems engineers and security experts. And so far, I'm please to say that we're on track and our defenses are steadily coming together for the U.S. midterms.

Now let me turn it over to my colleague Tessa.

Tessa Lyons: Thanks, Samidh. I am Tessa Lyons. I'm a Product Manager on News Feed. And I focus on false news. We know that people want to see accurate information on Facebook. And so do we. So we're working hard to stop the spread of false news.



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Today I want to talk about one part of our strategy; our partnership with third party fact checking organizations. We're seeing progress in our ability to limit the spread of articles rated false by fact checkers, and we're scaling our effort.

Here's how it works; we use signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to predict potentially false stories for fact checkers to review. When fact checkers rate a story as false, we significantly reduce its distribution in News Feed, dropping future views, on average, by more than 80 percent. We notify people who've shared the story in the past and warn people who try to share it going forward.

For those that still come across the story in their News Feed, we show more information from fact checkers in the Related Articles unit. We use the information from fact checkers to train our machine learning model so that we can catch more potentially false news stories and do so faster.

We know that we will always be behind if we're just going after individual stories. So we also take action against Pages and Domains that repeatedly share false news. We reduce their distribution and remove their ability to advertise and monetize, stopping them from reaching, growing or profiting from their audience.

We're ramping up our fact checking efforts to fight false news around elections. We're scaling in the U.S. and internationally, expanding beyond links to photos and videos, and increasing transparency.

In the U.S. we recently announce a partnership with the Associated Press to use their reporters in all 50 states to identify and debunk false and misleading stories related to the federal, state and local U.S. midterm elections.

Internationally, we have fact checking partners in six countries and we're working to expand to more. Our most recent launches were in Italy and Mexico where we enabled fact checking partners to proactively identify and rate stories, insuring we could take action quickly in the run up to their elections.



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As of yesterday, we're fact checking photos and videos, in addition to links. We're starting in France with the AFP, and we'll be sailing to more countries and partners soon.

And over the coming months, we'll be taking additional steps to increase transparency around our fact checking efforts, including clearer notifications to Page admin and greater clarity around the appeals process.

Finally, we know we can't go it alone. So we're doubling down on our partnerships with academics, technology companies, and other partners.

Now, let me turn it over to Rob Leathern to talk about ads transparency.

Rob Leathern: Thanks, Tessa. I'm Rob Leathern and I'm on the Facebook Ads Team. We believe people should be able to easily understand why they're seeing ads, who paid for them, and what other ads that advertiser is running.

Last fall we announced we will build a new transparency feature for all ads on Facebook, and provide additional transparency for U.S. federal election related ads.

Already, we've been testing transparency across all ads in Canada; something we call "View Ads.” With it, you can click on any Facebook page and select about and scroll to "View Ads.” There you'll see all the ads that page is running across Facebook, not just the ones meant for you.

This summer we'll make that feature globally available. Next we'll build on our ads review process and begin authorizing U.S. advertisers placing political ads. This spring, in the run up to the U.S. midterm elections, advertisers will have to verify and confirm who they are and where they are located in the U.S. The process will include a number of checks and steps.

First, page admins will have to submit their government issued IDs, and provide a physical mailing address for verification. Second, we’ll confirm each address by mailing a letter with a unique access code that only their specific Facebook account can use. And third, advertisers will also have to disclose what candidate, organization or business they represent. Once



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authorized, an advertiser’s election related ads will be clearly marked in people’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. This is similar to the disclosure you see today for political ads on television. The political label will also list the person, company, or organization that paid for the ad with a paid-for-by disclosure.

This summer, we’ll launch a public archive showing all ads that ran with a political label. Beyond the (ad creative) itself, we’ll also show how much money was spent on each ad, the number of impressions it received, and the demographic information about the audience reached. We’ll display these ads for four years after they ran. Researchers, journalists, watchdog organizations, or individuals who are just curious will be able to see all of these ads in one place. This will offer an unmatched view of paid political messages on the platform.

We recognize this is a place to start and we’ll work with outside experts to make it better. We also look forward to bringing unprecedented advertising transparency to other countries and other political races.

Now, I’ll turn it back to Guy to wrap up.

Guy Rosen: Thanks, Rob. Let me close with a last but very important point about why we’re even doing this work.

We do it because civic discourse is something we at Facebook strongly believe in. And we know it can thrive on our platform when it’s safe, it’s authentic, and it’s accurate. That’s our goal and that’s why we’re taking all of the steps we just outlined.

And with that, we’re happy to take questions.

Operator: We will now open the line for a question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question per person. To ask a question, press “star” followed by the number “one” on your touch-tone phone. Please pick up your handset before asking your question to ensure clarity.



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Your first question comes from the line of a Jo Kent from NBC News. Please go ahead.

Jo Kent: Hi there. Thanks for holding this call for all of us. My question is how has the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal impacted the way all of you look at how third party -- third parties influence voters in the lead up to the midterm elections here in the US? What have you guys learned and what are you applying too all of these different processes you just outlined?

Thank you.

Tom Reynolds: Hey. This is Tom Reynolds. I can take that.

Let me start with, I think what happened with Cambridge represents a clear violation of people’s trust and for that, we are very sorry. We’ve been clear on this and we know that there’s more that we can do. I think Mark spoke for all of us and the whole company when he said we’re working hard to tackle these issues and past abuse. We’re going to have more on this issue soon, but I don’t think we have anything additional to add at this time.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of a Deepa Seetharaman from Wall Street Journal. Please go ahead.

Deepa Seetharaman: Hey, guys. Thanks for doing this.

I have a question about political advertising. Has there been -- are you guys are contemplating any changes to the way you handle election ads, political advertising? And I don’t mean the archive or any of the ad transparency efforts, but how they’re actually treated in the ad auction process. Right now they compete with commercial advertising and they’re kind of graded on the same scale; is there any -- has there been any discussion about changing the standards or changing the way that you calculate whether or not a political ad should be shown to a user?

Rob Leathern: I don’t think we have anything to announce at this time around that. But I mean, I think we have been thinking through all of this. We also believe that the transparency that we provide to people with the archive which will include



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the information about the spend, the number of impressions, will provide people insights in to things like what do ads cost. We think that’s a very important step for our transparency. We’re not just providing transparency in the kinds of ads and creatives that are provided but also the pricing information will be available.

We think hat’s a big step. We don’t have any other specific things to talk about this time about how they’re treating the ads auction for example.

Operator: Your next question is from Jessica Guynn from USA Today. Please go ahead.

Jessica Guynn: Hi. Thanks or taking my question. I want to try and squeeze in two.

The first question is what about the political ads that are not necessarily explicitly political such as activity from the Internet Research Agency, the (division) around hot button issues?

And second, how confident are you that you are going to be able to prevent that kind of foreign interference in the midterm elections?

Rob Leathern: This is Rob from the ads team.

I’ll start -- we’re obviously thinking through issue ads as the next step but we’re starting with US federal election ads. We want to make progress as soon a possible and continue to improve what we’re doing. I think in terms of issue ads, I think our approach is to start with the federal election ads as we’ve discussed but definitely we’re thinking through issue ads as a next step.

Operator: Your next question…

Guy Rosen: … hey, this is Guy -- sorry, this is Guy. I just want to add to Rob’s answer.

I think these steps that we’ve outlined are very much designed to help prevent the kind of activity that we saw in the 2016 cycle from the Internet Research Agency. But we think about both the steps -- the steps that we’re taking and how they can prevent what we’ve learned but also what are the next kind of threats that happen? And the work that we’re doing casts an even wider net to



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support the next kind of threats that are out there and to help us get ahead of what might be coming.

Tom Reynolds: I think Jessie had a second part to her question, which we can speak to with Samidh and Alex.

Samidh Chakrabarti: Hi, this is Samidh. Just jumping in on this.

I think we’ve seen that this is going to require a really comprehensive approach. So there isn’t just one particular solution here; the ad transparency work is just one component of a more comprehensive solution. Which is why we’re doing all the additional work around removing fake accounts, reducing the spread of false news, and so on. And so I think taking this really comprehensive approach is absolutely critical for us to be able to not just solve the problems of 2016, but, as Guy mentioned, to solve new problems and new issues that may arise this year.

Alex Stamos: And, hey, this is Alex.

I totally agree with those guys. It’s really important for us while we solve the issues we saw in 2016 to not get tunnel-vision there. We have to deal with this issue globally, and when you look at different elections, and the different adversaries those elections face, the techniques can be much more broad than what we saw out of the IRA and the other Russian groups in 2016. So while we are making sure that we’re addressing that issue, we’re also trying to build broad product solutions that are not based upon the actions of one adversary; we don’t want to only be fighting the last war.

Operator: Your next question is from Kerry Flynn from Mashable. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Kerry Flynn: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question.

Mark said briefly that the latest change to News Feed could hurt your bottom line; does the same concern apply to the work being done to protect election integrity?



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I think it’s very important that -- Mark has said we’re going -- we’re going to be willing to give up revenue in exchange for being a positive influence in people’s lives, so we’re focused on solving this from a consumer perspective, and giving them a great experience on the platform. I think it’s fair to say that is absolutely the focus of the people on this call, is making sure the experience people have is as positive as possible.

Guy Rosen: Hey, this is Guy.

I’ll add and reiterate -- working on this stuff is exceptionally important, and as Mark has definitely said, we’re willing to give up profitability to have this kind of positive impact. For example, we are massively growing the efforts we have across safety and security. We have 10,000 people working on this, growing to 20,000 this year. That is a very meaningful investment, and it’s the kind of thing that you can expect to see us continue to do in order to keep our platform safe and a good place for everyone.

Operator: Again, to ask a question, please press “star,” “one.”

Your next question is from Tamsin McMahon from Globe and Mail. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Tamsin McMahon: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for organizing this call.

My paper is a national paper in Canada, and I was hoping to get some more insight into the ad transparency project that you, I guess, piloted in Canada. I’m curious, why Canada, and then also what kind of insights you might have gained from the work you’ve done there, in terms of how many people may have interacted with that feature, or whether it uncovered any interesting information about how advertisers might be using the platform or misusing the platform.




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We think that the tests -- we’ve learned a lot of things from the tests. I think one of the things that advertisers said, for example, was that they realize with this new feature that they could get called on what they say at any time, which I think is very important for holding advertisers accountable for what they say and who they are. So we think -- we think that transparency helps everyone, and especially it’s also going to be very helpful to political watchdog groups and reporters as well. We found it to be a very useful test, and we’re very confident that we’ll be able to launch globally this summer.

Operator: Your next question is from Tony Romm from Washington Post. Please go ahead.

Tony Romm: … (ready) -- just a quick clarification.

Mark briefly talked about the Honest Ads Act when he did his round of interviews just a couple days ago, so let’s be super clear about it. Do you guys endorse the Honest Ads Act in its current form, and what is your current take on work at the FEC right now to require a heightened disclaimer on political ads?

Rob Leathern: Yes, this is Rob.

We’re not waiting for any specific regulation to move aggressively ahead with our ads transparency efforts. So we certainly -- we certainly support the ideas behind this, but we’re not waiting, and we’re taking very proactive steps here. And I would also add that the steps we’re taking are unprecedented in any media -- that we are providing this level of transparency around ads on the platform.

Operator: Your next question is from Josh Constine from TechCrunch. Please go ahead.

Josh Constine: Thank you. (Hi).

You explained that you’re starting to use preemptive fact checking, where some fact-checking organizations can start checking stories before you guys send them to them. Could you explain more about that?



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Tessa Lyons: Hey, Josh. This is Tessa.

Yes, we have in a couple of the countries where we’ve recently launched, like Italy and Mexico, enable fact-checkers to proactively flag things to us. The rationale behind this was that in some cases fact-checkers are able to identify hoaxes that are spreading faster than our systems are, particularly in countries where we’ve just launched. In the countries where we’ve just launched, our ability to detect misinformation and the specifics of how the misinformation manifests in those countries isn’t as sophisticated as it is after being in a country for many months with a fact-checking program.

In order to reduce latency, particularly in advance of elections, which we had in Italy and which are upcoming in Mexico, we wanted to ensure that we gave fact-checkers that ability.

Operator: Again, “star,” “one” to ask a question.

Your next question is from Deepa Seetharaman from Wall Street Journal. Please go ahead.

Deepa Seetharaman: Hi, just a quick follow-up.

It’s been reported that in the run up to the 2016 election the relationship between Facebook and intelligence agencies, there wasn’t a lot of information sharing there, regarding some of the activity that you saw on Facebook from Russian actors. Can you comment at all on whether that relationship has changed and how it might be shaping your election integrity efforts? Thanks.

Alex Stamos: Hi, Deepa. It’s Alex.

During the 2016 -- the run up to the 2016 election, the activity that we saw on the platform we shared voluntarily and proactively with the appropriate law enforcement, federal law enforcement. And we have continued to share whenever possible before we do any public announcements. That includes in April of 2017 and before our September 2017 blog post on the Internet Research Agency.



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Recently, we’ve had some very good talks. We were very heartened by the creation of a task force in the FBI to coordinate between all of the different law enforcement and intelligence agencies that are interested in this area. And we are deeply engaging with them as well as DHS and other agencies to make sure that we have open and rapid communication channels between now and the midterms.

Operator: Your next question is from David McCabe from Axios. Please, go ahead. Your line is open.

David McCabe: Hi, all.

I just have a quick follow-up on the question about issue ads. You said that it’s the next step. I know you’ve said that some of these ad transparency efforts are going to rollout this summer. But realistically, how long do you think you have to address the issue ads question before it’s too late, before something else on the scale of the 2016 incident happens again? And when do you expect to get that done?

Rob Leathern: This is Rob.

I’d say, we haven’t announced anything specifically (out there) around this. But we’re obviously committed to improving overall. And we think transparency is a very important part of this. So we definitely continue to work on the candidate ads and we hope to follow-up with additional information in the near future.

Operator: Your next question is from Nancy Scola from Politico. Please, go ahead.

Nancy Scola: Hi.

Following up on something that was raised earlier, how prepared do you think you’re going to be for the midterm elections in the United States?

Samidh Chakrabarti: I think -- this is Samidh -- I think one think that’s important to recognize is that there’ve been a lot of elections around the world since 2016. We’ve seen elections in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Kenya, we see so many elections



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around the world at any given time, and we’ve gotten progressively better over the last year and a half. And every single country that we’ve done this kind of work in has a unique set of challenges and issues that we work through country by country.

And so, every single election that we work on across the world, we improve our overall defenses and we learn from the previous experiences. And so, together, taking this comprehensive approach that we outlined before and our continuous improvement through other elections that are happening around the world, we feel like we’re going to be in a really place for 2018, U.S. midterm.

Operator: Your next question is from Barbara Ortutay from The Associated Press. Please go ahead.

Barbara Ortutay: I have a couple of questions.

One, how much of your focus is going beyond elections on other ways that these bad actors are misusing Facebook? So, everything from Myanmar to other political events that are happening that are not necessarily elections related. And, number two, since the fall congressional hearings on Russian interference, have you found or share any new information with lawmakers on that that you can talk about?

Alex Stamos: Hi, thank you. This is Alex, again.

Yes, we are very focused on making sure that we are not -- that our platforms are not abused between elections. Because you’re absolutely right, while elections are acute incidents by -- around which political interference can be very damaging. Those are not the only situations. And we are, very, focused on, both, the foreign actor components as well as understanding the particular cultural issues in various countries where we need to make sure that we are enforcing our community standards appropriately.

On the second question, we continue to share whatever we find, any additional activity proactively and, like I said, we’re looking to build relationships with law enforcement where we can have a real positive, two way, conversation



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about what we are seeing and then hopefully getting back technical indicators that come from other platforms.

Operator: Your next question is from Sabrina Nanji from Toronto Star. Please go ahead.

Sabrina Nanji: Hi there.

I’m wondering if you can tell me how many people have tried to delete or deactivate their account over the past two weeks since the campaign Analytica story broke and how does that compare to normal times or an average?

Guy Rosen: Hey, this is Guy.

Look, we have -- we know we have work to do to earn people’s trust back and we have a responsibility to do better on a lot of these fronts. That’s why we’re here today to talk about the responsibility that we have to prevent this kind of abuse, particularly, around election security.

Operator: Your next question is from Casey Newton from The Verge. Please go ahead.

Casey Newton: Hi, my question is a follow up to Deepa’s.

I want to know beyond the creation of that task force, is Facebook getting any support from the Federal government in fighting against state sponsored attacks? And what would actually be useful to Facebook, from the government, to protect against these misinformation campaigns?

Alex Stamos: Hey, it’s Alex, again.

We actually have a long running positive engagement on traditional cyber actors. Even well before 2016 we and the other major tech companies have been able to get information on the offensive cyber actors that some of which are state sponsored and some of which might just be ideologically or aligned with nation states.

I think the change that you are seeing is a shift in the entire industry. Where, before 2016, on the government side, in the private intelligence companies



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and in the intelligence teams inside the big platforms, we had a real focus on that, kind of, traditional offensive cyber operations.

And since the election, we’ve had to broaden our view to include groups that do not do any kind of traditional hacking. And that might not be as highly technically skilled, but are very good at using the platforms to spread misinformation, disinformation, perhaps, without the kind of components that we’ve looked for before.

And so, we -- it’s not -- I wouldn’t say it’s a new relationship. That relationship has existed for years. What we are working on is making sure that we are all aligned on the different groups that we want to track and making sure the information that’s shared happens quickly. Which is also an issue that we’ve been working with government to make sure that information is shared quickly enough that we’re able to stop the activity, not -- just look backwards months later.

Tom Reynolds: Before we move on. Operator, I think we’re going to have time for two more questions. If we didn’t get a chance to get to your question today, apologies, you can reach us at [email protected] and we’re happy to follow up. And then, lastly, I think we’re looking forward to doing these briefings on a much more regular basis, moving forward. So, we hope we can continue talking to you then.

We can take the next question.

Operator: Your next question is from (Olivia Gavin) from CBS News. Please go ahead.

(Olivia Gavin): Hi, thanks very much for this.

One quick follow up on your fact checking partnership. Can you quantify, at all, the number of people that you’re working with in the U.S. and worldwide? And then, what the breakdown is between humans and machines looking at content, including, video and photo? And then, how you intend to scale both? Thanks.



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Tessa Lyons: So, we’ve launched, already, in six different countries. In those countries, we’re working with fact checking partners who are signatories of Poynter’s international fact checking network principles. In the U.S., one of them, as I mentioned, is the AP. We’ve shared those announcements and can follow up with some of the specifics if you need them.

Within those fact checking organizations there are a different number of individuals, but -- and that varies partner to partner. In terms of the interplay between technology and human review, I want to reiterate that fact checking is just one of many things that we’re doing to address misinformation. On the fact checking specifics, the algorithmic piece is helpful for prioritizing and predicting content for fact checkers to review and also for identifying duplicates of content.

One of the things that we’ve increasingly seen in this adversarial space, is that a individual hoax article will be propagated against lots of different sites in a copy, paste way. And so, there is a benefit of having both the algorithmic systems as well as the human review and they benefit each other.

Guy Rosen: This is Guy.

Let me just add, we use automation in a number of ways. And, increasingly, we can use it to be more proactive in many of the areas across safety and security. And artificial intelligence is very helpful in many areas, but I also want to be clear that it has limitations. And in many cases, we need to understand things like context. Things like intent. And so, people are going to continue to be part of the equation, whether it’s people that report things to us, whether it’s fact checking partners, whether it’s people who review our reports.

Tom Reynolds: All right, Operator, this is going to be our last question.

Operator: Your final question comes from Alexis Madrigal from The Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Alexis Madrigal: Hey guys.



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This kind of goes to the complexities of your relationship with campaigns and it’s -- the question is if you guys are going to continue embedding staffers with political campaigns, going forward?

Tom Reynolds: Alexis, this is Tom, let me just start this off. I think, one thing I would point out is I think we -- we have given campaigns the same sort of support that we give to clients and that we work with and customers we work with across the board. I think, what’s more important is that we think about how we work to protect elections and promote civic engagements. That’s really a focus of what this team is doubling down on, frankly, between here and the U.S. midterms, Samidh.

Samidh Chakrabarti: This is Samidh. I’ll just jump in here, also.

I think one important thing to recognize is one of the real sources that people see during election time on Facebook, is the ability to interact directly with the candidates. Hear the candidate’s messages in their own words. And that’s a really important component of the overall civic discourse. And that’s something that we’re looking to continue to protect and enrich.

Operator: I will now turn the call back.

Tom Reynolds: Sorry, I think we’re going to wrap up, Operator.

I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you for everyone that’s in the room here for your time and more importantly for everyone on the call for joining us today. If you have follow ups, you can reach us at [email protected] and we look forward to talking to you, moving forward.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.

END

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COMPANY NAME - fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com · Web viewTo ask a question, press “star” followed by the number “one” on your touch-tone phone. ... And artificial intelligence