As India faces polls, Facebook says doesn’t want site misused

TIL Desk/World/New Delhi/ To ensure that its platform isn’t used to influence elections in India, Facebook has set up a task force consisting of several specialists who will monitor advertising and content on the platform as the world’s biggest democracy goes to polls next year.

There have been reports about Facebook being misused by external forces to meddle in the US elections held in 2016. The social networking giant has accepted that it missed certain things in the run up to the elections.”We want our platform to support free and fair elections and positive civic engagement.

We welcome the fact that the people will engage with their political leaders and candidates through our platform. But we don’t want them to abuse that,” said Richard Allan, vice-president, Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Facebook. He added that as elections near, the company will pull together specialists who will work with politicians to understand what local parties are doing.