WASHINGTON – Facebook’s “War Room,” a nondescript space adorned withAmerican and Brazilian flags, a team of 20 people monitors computer screensfor signs of suspicious activity.
The freshly launched unit at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters inCalifornia is the nerve center for the fight against misinformation andmanipulation of the largest social network by foreign actors trying toinfluence elections in the United States and elsewhere.
Inside, the walls have clocks showing the time in various regions of the USand Brazil, maps and TV screens showing CNN, Fox News and Twitter, andother monitors showing graphs of Facebook activity in real time.
Facebook, which has been blamed for doing too little to preventmisinformation efforts by Russia and others in the 2016 US election, nowwants the world to know it is taking aggressive steps with initiatives likethe war room.
“Our job is to detect … anyone trying to manipulate the public debate,”said Nathaniel Gleicher, a former White House cybersecurity policy directorfor the National Security Council who is now heading Facebook’scybersecurity policy.
“We work to find and remove these actors.”
Facebook has been racing to get measures in place and began operating thisnerve center — with a hastily taped “WAR ROOM” sign on the glass door –for the first round of the presidential vote in Brazil on October 7.
It didn’t take long to find false information and rumors being spread whichcould have had an impact on voters in Brazil.
“On election day, we saw a spike in voter suppression (messages) saying theelection was delayed due to protests. That was not a true story,” saidSamidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s head of civic engagement.
Chakrabarti said Facebook was able to remove these posts in a couple ofhours before they went viral.
“It could have taken days.”
– Humans and machines –
At the unveiling of the war room for a small group of journalists includingAFP this week, a man in a gray pork pie hat kept his eyes glued to hisscreen where a Brazilian flag was attached.
He said nothing but his mission was obvious — watching for any hints ofinterference with the second round of voting in Brazil on October 28.
The war room, which will ramp up activity for the November 6 midterm USelections, is the most concrete sign of Facebook’s efforts to weed outmisinformation.
With experts in computer science, cybersecurity and legal specialists, thecenter is operating during peak times for the US and Brazil at present,with plans to eventually work 24/7.
The war room adds a human dimension to the artificial intelligence toolsFacebook has already deployed to detect inauthentic or manipulativeactivity.
“Humans can adapt quickly to new threats,” Gleicher said of the latesteffort.
Chakrabarti said the new center is an important part of coordinatingactivity — even for a company that has been built on remote communicationsamong people in various parts of the world.
“There’s no substitute to face to face interactions,” he said.
The war room was activated just weeks ahead of the US vote, amid persistentfears of manipulation by Russia and other state entities, or efforts topolarize or inflame tensions.
The war room is part of stepped up security announced by Facebook that willbe adding some 20,000 employees.
“With elections we need people to detect and remove (false information) asquickly as possible,” Chakrabarti said.
The human and computerized efforts to weed out bad information complementeach other, according to Chakrabarti.
“If an anomaly is detected in an automated way, then a data scientist willinvestigate, will see if there is really a problem,” he said.
The efforts are also coordinated with Facebook’s fact-checking partnersaround the world including media organizations such as AFP and universityexperts.
Gleicher said the team will remain on high alert for any effort that couldlead to false information going viral and potentially impacting the resultof an election.
“We need to stay ahead of bad actors,” he said. “We keep shrinking thedoorway. They keep trying to get in. APP/AFP