Facebook says it’s getting better at protecting elections from foreign interference

Facebook will do a better job of preventing bad actors from abusing its platform to manipulate this year’s US presidential election than it did four years ago, its public affairs chief Nick Clegg said on Monday.

Facing a critical audience at a technology conference in Munich, Clegg, a British former deputy prime minister hired by Facebook in 2018, said interference by Russian and other operatives in the 2016 vote had “shocked everybody”.

But the world’s largest social network had since taken effective action to reduce the spread of fake news, he said, while most extremist political content was now being detected before it comes to public notice.