The integral part Facebook played in disseminating misinformation and fake news will be long-remembered. Perhaps that’s why the company just gave $500,000 in funding to a project called Defending Digital Democracy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos, who also serves as an advisor on the project, made the announcement on Wednesday in Las Vegas, according to CNN.
"I would like to see the security community broaden their thinking beyond traditional hacking to all the other ways technology can be abused," Stamos said in an interview with CNN Tech.
Defending Digital Democracy is led by former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney and includes advisers from tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Crowdstrike.
Facebook's investment in the Defending Digital Democracy initiative is its latest effort to determine how attackers are using social media to manipulate democracy.
Is this part of the company’s “mea culpa” for creating an algorithm that easily shared false, election-influencing information—while leaving honestly good causes struggling to get a piece of Facebook’s audience? Maybe. Regardless of the reasoning behind this move, the information that’d arise from this initiative could definitely be helpful in managing democracy in the new digital age.