Facebook assures transparency with political ads ahead of 2019 Indian general election

Ahe of 2019 Indian general election, social media giant Facebook said it will soon come up with transparency tools for electoral s in India. According to Facebook, it will help company prevent foreign interference, in dition to making political vertising on Facebook more transparent.

Facebook will also create a publicly accessible search library of political vertisements for up to seven years including information such as vertisement's budget, campaign's reach and demographics such as , and location.

Social networking giant Facebook is planning to establish two new regional operations centres to maintain election integrity. se regional operations centres will be located in Facebook's Dublin and Singapore offices.

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In dition to assuring transparency, Facebook apparently trying to curb fake news, hate speech and voter suppression.

"(Facebook) will work cross-functionally with our threat intelligence, data science, engineering, research, community operations, legal and or teams," explained Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Director at Facebook.

Facebook said it will continue expanding ir third-party fact-checking program. Last month, Facebook anunced that it will show disclaimer on all political s in India by offering more information about who is placing vertisement.

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"w anyone who wants to run an in India related to politics will need to first confirm ir identity and location, and give more details about who placed ," said Sarah Clark Schiff, Product Manr at Facebook.

Throughout 2018, Facebook was severely criticised for ir role in Cambridge Analytica data scandal influencing 2016 US presidential election. Facebook was also scrutinised for being unable to dress suspicious involvement of Russians deep into its system.