Facebook was encountering predetermination interference contented arsenic acold backmost arsenic 2006, immoderate 10 years earlier Mark Zuckerberg archetypal acknowledged the issue, the platform's erstwhile caput of planetary nationalist argumentation has claimed.
Speaking astatine Sky News' Big Ideas Live event, wherever experts and manufacture leaders discussed the biggest subject and exertion issues of our times, Paul Kelly said unit had to woody with it "all the time".
"We saw the archetypal aspects of misinformation campaigns being built astir elections arsenic aboriginal arsenic 2006 and successful 2008," Mr Kelly revealed astatine a sheet connected the aboriginal of large tech companies.
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"We really did a fig of projects to effort to summation civic engagement connected the level astatine that time. And we surely saw radical effort to usage misinformation to power elections aboriginal connected astatine that phase."
Facebook laminitis Zuckerberg admitted successful 2017 that helium should person taken concerns astir fake quality starring up to the 2016 statesmanlike election, erstwhile Donald Trump won the contention to the White House, much seriously.
He had dismissed the conception arsenic "crazy", but past wrote successful a nationalist station successful September 2017: "Calling that brainsick was dismissive and I regret it.
"This is excessively important an contented to beryllium dismissive."
Mr Kelly was responding to an assemblage member's question astir the nexus betwixt societal media and accrued divisiveness successful US authorities and elsewhere.
Challenged by Sky News' exertion analogous Rowland Manthorpe astir the spread betwixt Facebook tackling misinformation and Zuckerberg acknowledging the issue, Mr Kelly said "the standard changed".
"I had near by then," helium stressed.
"But we decidedly had seen immoderate attempts astatine electoral misinformation successful the earlier races."
A spokesperson for Facebook's genitor institution Meta said it had "developed a broad attack to however elections play retired connected our platform" - "reflecting years of work" and "billions of dollars successful investments".
They added that they had "dedicated teams moving connected elections", including this month's US midterms.
"Meta has hundreds of radical moving crossed much than 40 teams to combat predetermination and elector interference, combat misinformation and find and region violating contented and accounts," they said.
"We've besides developed stronger policies to halt claims of delegitimisation oregon fraud connected our services."
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