Facebook remains in an “arms race” with countries attempting to use its services to interfere in the elections of others, Mark Zuckerberg said in a new interview released Thursday.
Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive officer, made the remark while discussing countering efforts from countries like Iran, China and Russia, the BBC reported.
He also admitted Facebook was “behind” in 2016, when Russian actors weaponized the social network to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, but he added that he believes his company is better suited to prevent attacks waged against the current White House race, BBC reported.
“Countries are going to continue to try and interfere, and we are going to see issues like that, but we have learnt a lot since 2016, and I feel pretty confident that we are going to be able to protect the integrity of the upcoming election,” Mr. Zuckerberg told the network.
“It’s a big deal if governments are trying to interfere in elections, and I don’t want to say anything that implies that we’re not taking this extremely seriously,” Mr. Zuckerberg said during the interview, The Daily Mail reported. “The reality here is we learned a lot about how politics works online since 2016, and there are a lot of different threats that we’ve worked hard to mitigate.”
Facebook previously said that millions of people who use the company’s flagship social network and Instagram photo-sharing service viewed politically charged content, including paid advertisements, placed on its platforms during the 2016 presidential race by Russia internet trolls. The U.S. Department of Justice later announced related criminal charges against more than a dozen individuals believed to be involved.
Testifying before Congress in 2018, Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook was actively trying to prevent foreign actors from weaponizing its services once again.
“There are people in Russia whose job it is to try to exploit our systems and other internet systems,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at the time. “So this is an arms race. They’re going to keep getting better at this, and we need to invest in keeping on getting better at this, too.”
Russia has previously denied interfering in the 2016 race.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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