Facebook fine-tunes false-post defenses

Company also removes accounts originating from Iran, Russia.

Facebook on Monday introduced a slew of efforts meant to fine-tune its defenses against disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election, but the tech giant left untouched its policy that allows political candidates to lie in their political ads.

The changes include new requirements for owners of Facebook pages, which must disclose more clearly the organizations that run them or whether they’re tied to a country’s state-owned media, along with more prominent labels around debunked news and tougher rules to prevent voter suppression. The announcements seek to remedy some vulnerabilities that malicious actors have tapped in recent months to spread false or misleading posts, photos and videos.

Adding to the urgency, Facebook also revealed Monday it had removed four separate networks of accounts — three originating in Iran, and one in Russia — that violated the company’s rules around “inauthentic behavior.” Facebook said the Russian network, which operated primarily on Instagram, showed some links to the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-backed entity that sowed social and political unrest during the 2016 presidential race. Facebook described it as a “well-resourced operation,” focused on the U.S. About 246,000 users followed at least one or more of the accounts, which the company said “took consistent operational security steps to conceal their identity and location.”

“We have a responsibility to stop abuse and election interference on our platform,” the company said in a blog post.

But the suite of policy and product fixes is unlikely to end the growing dispute over Facebook’s handling of political ads,

particularly from President Donald Trump, that contain falsehoods. Facebook’s decision against fact-checking or blocking those ads — which Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, defended in an interview with The Washington Post last week — has drawn sharp rebukes from Democratic presidential candidates, who have accused Facebook of profiting from lies.

Facebook’s announcements arrive two days before Zuckerberg is set to appear on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are likely to press him on the company’s work to safeguard

U.S. elections from foreign manipulation. During the 2016 presidential race, Russian agents weaponized the site to spread falsehoods and stoke social and political unrest, aiming to boost Trump and damage Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Zuckerberg last week told The Post the company is in a “much better place now” to stop such disinformation campaigns more than a year before voters head to the polls, citing the company’s investments in staff and artificial intelligence and its successes in other elections, including in Europe. Still, Zuckerberg cautioned the threat is never “going to go away,” pointing to recent disinformation campaigns from countries including Iran and China.

The lingering global threat became apparent again Monday, when Facebook said it removed a group of 93 accounts linked to Iran that tried to “masquerade as locals” to post on political issues, primarily targeting the U.S. Another network tied to Iran misrepresented itself as a news agency and posted on race relations in the U.S.

Going forward, certain Facebook pages with large U.S. followings must disclose organizations behind them, part of an effort to crack down on instances in which owners obscure their origin “as a way to make people think that a page is run independently.”