Facebook and Instagram test location labels to fight election meddling
The company will add labels to popular pages run from outside the US.
Facebook and Instagram are again trying to make it harder for foreign propaganda to spread. A new feature will automatically add prominent labels to posts from accounts that are popular within the United States but are run from another country, Facebook announced.
With the update, posts from “high-reach” Facebook and Instagram accounts will come with labels alerting followers of the account owner’s location. The “about” section” will also display messages about where the account owner is based.
“This account and many of its followers are based in different locations,” Instagram’s in-app message says. A similar note will appear on Facebook posts.
The update could help fight the kind of disinformation tactics used by Russia in the 2016 election, when trolls posed as US-based activists on Facebook and Instagram. The Russian accounts often amassed significant followings and even organized events, with most followers never realizing the “activists” weren’t even in the United States.
“These changes are part of our broader efforts to protect elections and increase transparency on Facebook and Instagram so people can make more informed decisions about the posts they read, trust and share,” the company wrote in a statement.
The feature is currently a test “with Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts that are based outside the US but reach large audiences based primarily in the US,” though it could expand to cover more locations in the future, Facebook says.
