Facebook trying to block false information as election nears
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- In the age of social media comes an issue of what flows through it, and when it comes to politics you're looking at avenues for the spreading of misinformation that can push election interference.
"It's incredibly difficult," said professor of political science at Rice University, Paul Brace.
"They used this in 2016 to try and suppress the black vote by sending out information that was erroneous or about Hillary to discourage black voters from voting for Hillary Clinton," he added.
Researchers found in 2016, 5 percent of political news generated came from fake sources. On Twitter 1 percent of users shared 80 percent of that fake news.
Today Facebook issued a statement on election integrity. The company highlighted their efforts fight against interference.
The company says they've tripled security to monitor networks and weed out coordinated inauthentic behavior, they're working closer with election and state authorities and other technology companies, and they say they've established an election operations center that will respond to election threats and attempts at voter suppression for any party.
Experts encourage voters to read articles before sharing, and to be on the lookout for misinformation patterns.
