Facebook said it will begin publishing the location information of high-reach Facebook pages and Instagram accounts to help combat foreign influence efforts and provide more transparency. The piloting of the new feature will focus on foreign Facebook and Instagram accounts with a large audience in the U.S.
“We want to make sure people use our services authentically and can understand who is behind the posts they’re seeing,” wrote Anita Joseph and Georgina Sheedy-Collier, product managers at Facebook and Instagram respectively. “This is particularly important when it comes to elections, so we’re taking extra steps to make Pages and accounts with large audiences more transparent.”
This week’s changes to Facebook’s transparency policies are the latest effort to assist users attempting to better understand the veracity of the information they discover on Facebook. Last week, Facebook said it would notify users who engaged with misinformation about coronavirus on its platform. People who like, react, or comment on misinformation regarding coronavirus will get an alert in their news feeds, according to Facebook.
Facebook’s efforts to serve its users with accurate information also extends to restricting content. Facebook said earlier this week that it would delete event pages for protests organized in defiance of states’ social distancing guidelines. Events promoted in California, Nebraska, and New Jersey would be removed, a Facebook spokesman told CNN.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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