Facebook has developed a toolkit to curb misinformation and sensationalized viral content in the event of election-related civil unrest, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
The tools, previously used in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where Facebook endured backlash for enabling human rights abuses, would only be deployed in “dire circumstances,” but the company is preparing itself for all possible outcomes after Election Day. If necessary, the company has specific plans to slow the spread of posts and to tweak the algorithm that controls what content the newsfeed displays. Facebook may also lower the threshold of what its software detects as dangerous content. Some of the planned moves “could suppress some good-faith political discussion,” the WSJ reported.
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