Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on Tuesday.
Zuckerberg was asked to guarantee that all content created by or associated with fake accounts created by Russian agents to interfere in the election were "purged" from the social media platform.
He described the ongoing battle against foreign actors using Facebook an "ongoing 'arms race'" and said that it would be unrealistic to say that Facebook would be “100 percent successful."
This is an ongoing ‘arms race.’ As long as there are people sitting in Russia whose job it is is to try to interfere with elections around the world, this is going to be an ongoing conflict.
He continued, “What I can commit is that we’re going to invest significantly because this is a top priority to make sure people aren’t trying to spread misinformation or trying to interfere in elections on Facebook. But I don’t think it would be a realistic expectation to assume that – as long as there are people employed in Russia for whom this is their job … that we’re going to be 100 percent successful in that.”
Zuckerberg also confirmed that Facebook is working with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
When asked to address what the company plans to do to address possible attempts to interfere in future elections by foreign actors, Zuckerberg replied that Facebook will be requiring advertisers to meet certain credentials to run political ads, including having a valid government ID and location of business.
Facebook announced on Friday that it will start requiring advertisers who seek to run political ads to be “verified."
The company will also start verifying all users who manage pages with large followings, regardless if they run ads.
“This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way,” Zuckerberg explained.