Washington DC: Facebook and Twitter are taking steps to prevent foreign interference in the upcoming crucial elections in the US and around the world, top executives of the two social media giants have assured lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.
US intelligence agencies have in the past claimed that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election won by President Donald Trump. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the claims during a summit with his American counterpart in Helsinki in July.
Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Executive Officer of Twitter Jack Dorsey have testified before the US Congress during the hearing which came just two months before the midterm elections in the US.
Sandberg told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "We are focused on the upcoming US midterms and on elections around the world. Our efforts in recent elections from Germany to Italy to Mexico to the Alabama special Senate election show us that the investments we are making are yielding results.
"We also know that we cannot stop interference by ourselves. We're working with outside experts, industry, partners and governments, including law enforcement, to share information about threats and prevent abuse".
Facebook is getting better at finding and "stopping our opponents" from financially motivated troll farms to sophisticated military intelligence operations, she said.
"We don't have access to intelligence that the government has, so we don't always know exactly who is behind these attacks or their motives, and that's why we will continue working closely with law enforcement," Sandberg said.
Twitter's Dorsey told lawmakers that his company has made significant progress recently on tactical solutions like identification of many forms of manipulation intending to artificially amplify information, more transparency around who buys ads and how they are targeted, and challenging suspicious logins and account creation.
"We've seen positive results from our work. We're now removing over 200 percent more accounts for violating our policies. We're identifying and challenging 8 to 10 million suspicious accounts every week, and we're thwarting over a half million accounts from logging in to Twitter every single day," Dorsey said. Twitter has learned from 2016 and more recently from other nations' elections how to protect the integrity of elections; better tools, stronger policy and new partnerships are already in place, he said.
"We intend to understand the efficacy of these measures to continue to get better, but we all have to think a lot bigger than decades past. We must ask the question, what is Twitter incentivising people to do or not do and why? The answers will lead to tectonic shifts in Twitter and our industry operates. Required changes won't be fast or easy," he said.
Responding to a question, Dorsey said Twitter has also learned a lot from elections around the world; most recently, the Mexican election.
Twitter opened a new portal to cover that election, that allows any journalist or government law enforcement to actually report any suspicious behaviour very quickly to it, so that they can take more
actions.