Facebook trains Election Commission of Pakistan officials to ensure ‘transparency’

A team of social media giant Facebook is training officials of the Election Commission of Pakistan ahead of the general elections in the neighbouring country. According to a report in Pakistan-based Dawn News, Facebook has deputed increased number of people to enhance safety and security measures.

The report further said that a dedicated team of Facebook is working to prevent any abuse of the platform ahead of the Pakistan general elections, scheduled to be held on July 25. A Facebook spokesperson in the country was quoted as saying that Facebook wanted to “ensure integrity of elections” in Pakistan and other countries across the world.

He further said that Facebook was working closely with the Election Commission of Pakistan to “understand specific challenges” and ensuring “transparency”.

Notably, the social media giant had in June announced expansion of its fact-checking programme to several countries in the bid to check the menace of fake news. Besides, Facebook had a month back issued fresh guidelines for political advertisements.

Facing flak over data breach during previous US presidential elections, Facebook had in May started labelling all political advertisements, including a “Paid for by” disclosure from the advertiser at the top of the ad.

Facebook had also conducted audit of each and every app that has data of its users. As many as 200 apps were suspended for failing to comply with the policy.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had promised a thorough investigation and audit into apps that had access to information before Facebook changed its platform policies in 2014 - significantly reducing the data apps could access.