Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Sunday addressed the company’s mistakes and addressed the hope to earn back Facebook users’ trust after a string of controversies involving user privacy.
“We need to stop abuse more quickly and we need to do better to protect people’s data,” Sandberg said at the DLD conference in Munich, as CNBC reported.
Facebook’s fall began when it was accused of misusing users’ private information after it was found that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica collected data of up to 87 million users without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission is now also looking to impose a record fine on the social media giant for its alleged violation of an agreement in place covering the protection and privacy of user data.
Sandberg said Facebook is doing five things this year as it “reflects and learns” from its mistakes. This includes investing in safety and security, providing protection against election interference, suppressing fake accounts and false information, ensuring people feel as though they control their data, and aiming for more transparency at the company, CNBC reports.
Sandberg said Facebook has employed 30,000 people to check its platform for hate posts and false information—five times the amount in 2017, Tech Crunch reported.
When it comes to election interference, Sandberg said the company is continuing to remove pages that display “inauthentic behavior.” The company has been blocking more than than 1 million “fake accounts” every day and has “dramatically cut down on the information apps can access” from users, CNBC reported.
She also announced Facebook would be teaming up with Germany in efforts to push back against election interference, TechCrunch reported.
“Speaking for Mark [Zuckerberg], for myself and for everyone at Facebook, we are more determined than ever to keep people safe,” she said, according to CNBC. “And we are taking strong actions to do it.”
Although the company’s shares have fallen over the past 12 months, Sandberg said Facebook is “one of the largest job creation platforms” and is “far from done.”
