Rebecca Stimson, Head of UK Public Policy, Facebook

We wanted to bring you all together, now that the UK General Election is underway, to set out the range of actions we are taking to help ensure this election is transparent and secure – to answer your questions and to point you to the various resources we have available.  

There has already been a lot of focus on the role of social media within the campaign and there is a lot of information for us to set out. 

We have therefore gathered colleagues from both the UK and our headquarters in Menlo Park, California, covering our politics, product, policy and safety teams to take you through the details of those efforts. 

I will just say a few opening remarks before we dive into the details

Helping protect elections is one of our top priorities and over the last two years we’ve made some significant changes – these broadly fall into three camps:

• We’ve introduced greater transparency so that people know what they are seeing online and can scrutinize it more effectively; 
• We have built stronger defenses to prevent things like foreign interference; 
• And we have invested in both people and technology to ensure these new policies are effective.

So taking these in turn. 

Transparency

On the issue of transparency. We’ve tightened our rules to make political ads much more transparent, so people can see who is trying to influence their vote and what they are saying. 

We’ll discuss this in more detail shortly, but to summarize:  

• Anybody who wants to run political ads must go through a verification process to prove who they are and that they are based here in the UK; 
• Every political ad is labelled so you can see who has paid for them;
• Anybody can click on any ad they see on Facebook and get more information on why they are seeing it, as well as block ads from particular advertisers;
• And finally, we put all political ads in an Ad Library so that everyone can see what ads are running, the types of people who saw them and how much was spent – not just while the ads are live, but for seven years afterwards.

Taken together these changes mean that political advertising on Facebook and Instagram is now more transparent than other forms of election campaigning, whether that’s billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail, leaflets or targeted emails. 

This is the first UK general election since we introduced these changes and we’re already seeing many journalists using these transparency tools to scrutinize the adverts which are running during this election – this is something we welcome and it’s exactly why we introduced these changes. 

Defense 

Turning to the stronger defenses we have put in place.

Nathaniel will shortly set out in more detail our work to prevent foreign interference and coordinated inauthentic behavior. But before he does I want to be clear right up front how seriously we take these issues and our commitment to doing everything we can to prevent election interference on our platforms. 

So just to highlight one of the things he will be talking about – we have, as part of this work, cracked down significantly on fake accounts. 

We now identify and shut down millions of fake accounts every day, many just seconds after they were created.

Investment

And lastly turning to investment in these issues.

We now have more than 35,000 people working on safety and security. We have been building and rolling out many of the new tools you will be hearing about today. And as Ella will set out later, we have introduced a number of safety measures including a dedicated reporting channel so that all candidates in the election can flag any abusive and threatening content directly to our teams.  

I’m also pleased to say that – now the election is underway – we have brought together an Elections Taskforce of people from our teams across the UK, EMEA and the US who are already working together every day to ensure election integrity on our platforms. 

The Elections Taskforce will be working on issues including threat intelligence, data science, engineering, operations, legal and others. It also includes representatives from WhatsApp and Instagram.

As we get closer to the election, these people will be brought together in physical spaces in their offices – what we call our Operations Centre. 

It’s important to remember that the Elections Taskforce is an additional layer of security on top of our ongoing monitoring for threats on the platform which operates 24/7. 

And while there will always be further improvements we can and will continue to make, and we can never say there won’t be challenges to respond to, we are confident that we’re better prepared than ever before.  

Political Ads

Before I wrap up this intro section of today’s call I also want to address two of the issues that have been hotly debated in the last few weeks – firstly whether political ads should be allowed on social media at all and secondly whether social media companies should decide what politicians can and can’t say as part of their campaigns. 

As Mark Zuckerberg has said, we have considered whether we should ban political ads altogether. They account for just 0.5% of our revenue and they’re always destined to be controversial. 

But we believe it’s important that candidates and politicians can communicate with their constituents and would be constituents. 

Online political ads are also important for both new challengers and campaigning groups to get their message out. 

Our approach is therefore to make political messages on our platforms as transparent as possible, not to remove them altogether. 

And there’s also a really difficult question – if you were to consider banning political ads, where do you draw the line – for example, would anyone advocate for blocking ads for important issues like climate change or women’s empowerment? 

Turning to the second issue – there is also a question about whether we should decide what politicians and political parties can and can’t say.  

We don’t believe a private company like Facebook should censor politicians. This is why we don’t send content or ads from politicians and political parties to our third party fact-checking partners.

This doesn’t mean that politicians can say whatever they want on Facebook. They can’t spread misinformation about where, when or how to vote. They can’t incite violence. We won’t allow them to share content that has previously been debunked as part of our third-party fact-checking program. And we of course take down content that violates local laws. 

But in general we believe political speech should be heard and we don’t feel it is right for private companies like us to fact-check or judge the veracity of what politicians and political parties say. 

Facebook’s approach to this issue is in line with the way political speech and campaigns have been treated in the UK for decades. 

Here in the UK – an open democracy with a vibrant free press – political speech has always been heavily scrutinized but it is not regulated. 

The UK has decided that there shouldn’t be rules about what political parties and candidates can and can’t say in their leaflets, direct mails, emails, billboards, newspaper ads or on the side of campaign buses.  

And as we’ve seen when politicians and campaigns have made hotly contested claims in previous elections and referenda, it’s not been the role of the Advertising Standards Authority, the Electoral Commission or any other regulator to police political speech. 

In our country it’s always been up to the media and the voters to scrutinize what politicians say and make their own minds up. 

Nevertheless, we have long called for new rules for the era of digital campaigning. 

Questions around what constitutes a political ad, who can run them and when, what steps those who purchase political ads must take, how much they can spend on them and whether there should be any rules on what they can and can’t say – these are all matters that can only be properly decided by Parliament and regulators.  

Legislation should be updated to set standards for the whole industry – for example, should all online political advertising be recorded in a public archive similar to our Ad Library and should that extend to traditional platforms like billboards, leaflets and direct mail?

We believe UK electoral law needs to be brought into the 21st century to give clarity to everyone – political parties, candidates and the platforms they use to promote their campaigns.

In the meantime our focus has been to increase transparency so anyone, anywhere, can scrutinize every ad that’s run and by whom. 

I will now pass you to the team to talk you through our efforts in more detail.

• Nathaniel Gleicher will discuss tackling fake accounts and disrupting coordinated inauthentic behavior;
• Rob Leathern will take you through our UK political advertising measures and Ad Library;
• Antonia Woodford will outline our work tackling misinformation and our fact-checker partnerships; 
• And finally, Ella Fallows will fill you on what we’re doing around safety of candidates and how we’re encouraging people to participate in the election; 

Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy, Facebook 

My team leads all our efforts across our apps to find and stop what we call influence operations, coordinated efforts to manipulate or corrupt public debate for a strategic goal. 

We also conduct regular red team exercises, both internally and with external partners to put ourselves into the shoes of threat actors and use that approach to identify and prepare for new and emerging threats. We’ll talk about some of the products of these efforts today. 

Before I dive into some of the details, as you’re listening to Rob, Antonia, and I, we’re going to be talking about a number of different initiatives that Facebook is focused on, both to protect the UK general election and more broadly, to respond to integrity threats. I wanted to give you a brief framework for how to think about these. 

The key distinction that you’ll hear again and again is a distinction between content and behavior. At Facebook, we have policies that enable to take action when we see content that violates our Community Standards. 

In addition, we have the tools that we use to respond when we see an actor engaged in deceptive or violating behavior, and we keep these two efforts distinct. And so, as you listen to us, we’ll be talking about different initiatives we have in both dimensions. 

Under content for example, you’ll hear Antonia talk about misinformation, about voter suppression, about hate speech, and about other types of content that we can take action against if someone tries to share that content on our platform. 

Under the behavioral side, you’ll hear me and you’ll hear Rob also mention some of our work around influence operations, around spam, and around hacking. 

I’m going to focus in particular on the first of these, influence operations; but the key distinction that I want to make is when we take action to remove someone because of their deceptive behavior, we’re not looking at, we’re not reviewing, and we’re not considering the content that they’re sharing. 

What we’re focused on is the fact that they are deceiving or misleading users through their actions. For example, using networks of fake accounts to conceal who they are and conceal who’s behind the operation. So we’ll refer back to these, but I think it’s helpful to distinguish between the content side of our enforcement and the behavior side of our enforcement. 

And that’s particularly important because we’ve seen some threat actors who work to understand where the boundaries are for content and make sure for example that the type of content they share doesn’t quite cross the line. 

And when we see someone doing that, because we have behavioral enforcement tools as well, we’re still able to make sure we’re protecting authenticity and public debate on the platform. 

In each of these dimensions, there are four pillars to our work. You’ll hear us refer to each of these during the call as well, but let me just say that these four fit together, and no one of these by themselves would be enough, but all four of the together give us a layered approach to defending public debate and ensuring authenticity on the platform. 

We have expert investigative teams that conduct proactive investigations to find, expose, and disrupt sophisticated threat actors. As we do that, we learn from those investigations and we build automated systems that can disrupt any kind of violating behavior across the platform at scale. 

We also, as Rebecca mentioned, build transparency tools so that users, external researchers and the press can see who is using the platform and ensure that they’re engaging authentically. It also forces threat actors who are trying to conceal their identity to work harder to conceal and mislead. 

And then lastly, one of the things that’s extremely clear to us, particularly in the election space, is that this is a whole of society effort. And so, we work closely with partners in government, in civil society, and across industry to tackle these threats. 

And we’ve found that where we could be most effective is where we bring the tools we bring to the table, and then can work with government and work with other partners to respond and get ahead of these challenges as they emerge. 

One of the ways that we do this is through proactive investigations into the deceptive efforts engaged in by bad actors. Over the last year, our investigative teams, working together with our partners in civil society, law enforcement, and industry, have found and stopped more than 50 campaigns engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior across the world. 

This includes an operation we removed in May that originated from Iran and targeted a number of countries, including the UK. As we announced at the time, we removed 51 Facebook accounts, 36 pages, seven groups, and three Instagram accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. 

The page admins and account owners typically posted content in English or Arabic, and most of the operation had no focus on a particular country, although there were some pages focused on the UK and the United States. 

Similarly, in March we announced that we removed a domestic UK network of about 137 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, and groups that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior. 

The individuals behind these accounts presented themselves as far right and anti-far right activists, frequently changed page and group names, and operated fake accounts to engage in hate speech and spread divisive comments on both sides of the political debate in the UK. 

These are the types of investigations that we focus our core investigative team on. Whenever we see a sophisticated actor that’s trying to evade our automated systems, those teams, which are made up of experts from law enforcement, the intelligence community, and investigative journalism, can find and reveal that behavior. 

When we expose it, we announce it publicly and we remove it from the platform. Those expert investigators proactively hunt for evidence of these types of coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) operations around the world. 

This team has not seen evidence of widespread foreign operations aimed at the UK. But we are continuing to search for this and we will remove and publicly share details of networks of CIB that we identify on our platforms. 

As always with these takedowns, we remove these operations for the deceptive behavior they engaged in, not for the content they shared. This is that content/behavior distinction that I mentioned earlier. As we’ve improved our ability to disrupt these operations, we’ve also deepened our understanding of the types of threats out there and how best to counter them. 

Based on these learnings, we’ve recently updated our inauthentic behavior policy which is posted publicly as part of our Community Standards, to clarify how we enforce against the spectrum of deceptive practices we see in our platforms, whether foreign or domestic, state or non state. For each investigation, we isolate any new behaviors we see and then we work to automate detection of them at scale. This connects to that second pillar of our integrity work. 

And this slows down the bad guy and lets our investigators focus on improving our defenses against emerging threats. A good example of this work is our efforts to find and block fake accounts, which Rebecca mentioned. 

We know bad actors use fake accounts as a way to mask their identity and inflict harm on our platforms. That’s why we’ve built an automated system to find and remove these fake accounts. And each time we conduct one of these takedowns, or any other of our enforcement actions, we learn more about what fake accounts look like and how we can have automated systems that detect and block them. 

This is why we have these systems in place today that block millions of fake accounts every day, often within minutes of their creation. Because information operations often target multiple platforms as well as traditional media, I mentioned our collaborations with industry, civil society and government. 

In addition to that, we are building increased transparency on our platform, so that the public along with open source researchers and journalists can find and expose more bad behavior themselves. 

This effort on transparency is incredibly important. Rob will talk about this in detail, but I do want to add one point here, specifically around pages. Increasingly, we’re seeing people operate pages that clearly disclose the organization behind them as a way to make others think they are independent. 

We want to make sure Facebook is used to engage authentically, and that users understand who is speaking to them and what perspective they are representing. We noted last month that we would be announcing new approaches to address this, and today we’re introducing a policy to require more accountability for pages that are concealing their ownership in order to mislead people.

If we find a page is misleading people about its purpose by concealing its ownership, we will require it to go through our business verification process, which we recently announced, and show more information on the page itself about who is behind that page, including the organization’s legal name and verified city, phone number, or website in order for it to stay up. 

This type of increased transparency helps ensure that the platform continues to be authentic and the people who use the platform know who they’re talking to and understand what they’re seeing. 

Rob Leathern, Director of Product, Business Integrity, Facebook 

In addition to making pages more transparent as Nathaniel has indicated, we’ve also put a lot of effort into making political advertising on Facebook more transparent than it is anywhere else. 

Every political and issue ad in the that runs on Facebook now goes into our Ad Library public archive that everyone can access, regardless of whether or not they have a Facebook account. 

We launched this in the UK in October 2018 and, since then, there’s been over 116,000 ads related to politics, elections, and social issues placed in the UK Ad Library. You can find all the ads that a candidate or organization is running, including how much they spent and who saw the ad. And we’re storing these ads in the Ad Library for seven years. 

Other media such as billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail, leaflets or targeted emails don’t today provide this level of transparency into the ad and who is seeing them. And as a result, we’ve seen a significant number of press stories regarding the election driven by the information in Facebook’s Ad Library. 

We’re proud of this resource and insight into ads running on Facebook and Instagram and that it is proving useful for media and researchers. And just last month, we made even more changes to both the Ad Library and Ad Library Reports. These include adding details in who the top advertising spenders are in each country in the UK, as well as providing an additional view by different date ranges which people have been asking for. 

We’re now also making it clear which Facebook platform an ad ran on. For example, if an ad ran on both Facebook and/or Instagram. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Ad Library, which you can see at Facebook.com/adlibrary, I thought I’d run through it quickly. 

So this is the Ad Library. Here you see all the ads have been classified as relating to politics or issues. We keep them in the library for seven years. As I mentioned, you can find the Ad Library at Facebook.com/adlibrary. 

You can also access the Ad Library through a specific page. For example, for this Page, you can see not only the advertising information, but also the transparency about the Page itself, along with the spend data. 

Here is an example of the ads that this Page is running, both active as well as inactive. In addition, if an ad has been disapproved for violating any of our ad policies, you’re also able to see all of those ads as well. 

Here’s what it looks like if you click to see more detail about a specific ad. You’ll be able to see individual ad spend, impressions, and demographic information. 

And you’ll also be able to compare the individual ad spend to the overall macro spend by the Page, which is tracked in the section below. If you scroll back up, you’ll also be able to see the other information about the disclaimer that has been provided by the advertiser. 

We know we can’t protect elections alone and that everyone plays a part in keeping the platform safe and respectful. We ask people to share responsibly and to let us know when they see something that may violate our Advertising Policies and Community Standards. 

We also have the Ad Library API so journalists and academics can analyze ads about social issues, elections, or politics. The Ad Library application programming interface, or API, allows people to perform customized keyword searches of ads stored in the Ad Library. You can search data for all active and inactive issue, electoral or political ads. 

You can also access the Ad Library and the data therein through the specific page or through the Ad Library Report. Here is the Ad Library report, this allows you to see the spend by specific advertisers and you can download a full report of the data. 

Here we also allow you to see the spending by location and if you click in you can see the top spenders by region. So you can see, for example, in the various regions, who the top spenders in those areas are. 

Our goal is to provide an open API to news organizations, researchers, groups and people who can hold advertisers and us more accountable. 

We’ve definitely seen a lot of press, journalists, and researchers examining the data in the Ad Library and using it to generate these insights and we think that’s exactly a part of what will help hold both us and advertisers more accountable.

We hope these measures will build on existing transparency we have in place and help reporters, researchers and most importantly people on Facebook learn more about the Pages and information they’re engaging with. 

Antonia Woodford, Product Manager, Misinformation, Facebook

We are committed to fighting the spread of misinformation and viral hoaxes on Facebook. It is a responsibility we take seriously.

To accomplish this, we follow a three-pronged approach which we call remove, reduce, and inform. First and foremost, when something violates the laws or our policies, we’ll remove it from the platform all together.

As Nathaniel touched on, removing fake accounts is a priority, of which the vast majority are detected and removed within minutes of registration and before a person can report them. This is a key element in eliminating the potential spread of misinformation. 

The reduce and inform part of the equation is how we reduce the spread of problematic content that doesn’t violate the law or our community standards, while still ensuring freedom of expression on the platform and this is where the majority of our misinformation work is focused. 

To reduce the spread of misinformation, we work with third party fact-checkers. 

Through a combination of reporting from people on our platform and machine learning, potentially false posts are sent to third party fact-checkers to review. These fact-checkers review this content, check the facts, and then rate its accuracy. They’re able to review links in news articles as well as photos, videos, or text posts on Facebook.

After content has been rated false, our algorithm heavily downranks this content in News Feed so it’s seen by fewer people and far less likely to go viral. Fact-checkers can fact-check any posts they choose based on the queue we send them. 

And lastly, as part of our work to inform people about the content they see on Facebook, we just launched a new design to better warn people when they see content that’s illegal, false, or partly false by our fact-checking partners.

People will now see a more prominent label on photos and videos that have been fact-checked as false or partly false. This is a grey screen that sits over a post and says ‘false information’ and points people to fact-checkers’ articles debunking the claims. 

These clearer labels are what people have told us they want, what they have told us they expect Facebook to do, and what experts tell us is the right tactic for combating misinformation.

We’re rolling this change out in the UK this week for any photos and videos that have been rated through our fact-checking partnership. Though just one part of our overall strategy, fact-checking is a fundamental part of our strategy to combat this information and I want to share a little bit more about the program.

Our fact-checking partners are all accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network which requires them to abide by a code of principles such as nonpartisanship and transparency sources.

We currently have over 50 partners in over 40 languages around the world. As Rebecca outlined earlier, we don’t send content or ads from politicians and political parties to our third party fact-checking partners.

Here in the UK we work with Full Fact and FactCheckNI and I as part of our program. To recap we identify content that may be false using signals such as feedback from our users. This content is all submitted into a queue for our fact-checking partners to access. These fact-checkers then choose which content to review, check the facts, and rate the accuracy of the content.

These fact-checkers are independent organizations, so it is at their discretion what they choose to investigate. They can also fact-check whatever content they want outside of the posts we send their way.

If a fact-checker rates a story as false, it will appear lower in News Feed with the false information screen I mentioned earlier. This significantly reduces the number of people who see it.

Other posts that Full Fact and FactCheckNI choose to fact-check outside of our system will not be impacted on Facebook. 

And finally, on Tuesday we announced a partnership with the International Fact-Checking Network to create the Fact-Checking Innovation Initiative. This will fund innovation projects, new formats, and technologies to help benefit the broader fact-checking ecosystem. 

We are investing $500,000 into this new initiative, where organizations can submit applications for projects to improve fact-checkers’ scale and efficiency, increase the reach of fact-checks to empower more people with reliable information, build new tools to help combat misinformation, and encourage newsrooms to collaborate in fact-checking efforts.

Anyone from the UK can be a part of this new initiative. 

Ella Fallows, Politics and Government Outreach Manager UK, Facebook 

Our team’s role involves two main tasks: working with parties, MPs and candidates to ensure they have a good experience and get the most from our platforms; and looking at how we can best use our platforms to promote participation in elections.

I’d like to start with how MPs and candidates use our platforms. 

There is, rightly, a focus in the UK about the current tone of political debate. Let me be clear, hate speech and threats of violence have no place on our platforms and we’re investing heavily to tackle them. 

Additionally, for this campaign we have this week written to political parties and candidates setting out the range of safety measures we have in place and also to remind them of the terms and conditions and the Community Standards which govern our platforms. 

As you may be aware, every piece of content on Facebook and Instagram has a report button, and when content is reported to us which violates our Community Standards – what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook – it is removed. 

Since March of this year, MPs have also had access to a dedicated reporting channel to flag any abusive and threatening content directly to our teams. Now that the General Election is underway we’re extending that support to all prospective candidates, making our team available to anyone standing to allow them to quickly report any concerns across our platforms and have them investigated. 

This is particularly pertinent to Tuesday’s news from the Government calling for a one stop shop for candidates. We have already set up our own one stop shop so that there is a single point of contact for candidates for issues across Facebook and Instagram.

But our team is not working alone; it’s backed up by our 35,000-strong global safety and security team that oversees content and behavior across the platform every day. 

And our technology is also helping us to automatically detect more of this harmful content. For example, the proportion of hate speech we have removed before it’s reported to us has increased significantly over the last two years, and we will be releasing new figures on this later this month.

We also have a Government, Politics & Advocacy Portal which is a home for everything a candidate will need during the campaign, including ‘how to’ guides on subjects such as political advertising, campaigning on Facebook and troubleshooting guides for technical issues.

We’re working with the political parties to ensure candidates are aware of both the reporting channel to reach my team and the Government, Politics & Advocacy Portal.

We’re holding a series of sessions for candidates on safety and outlining the help available to address harassment on our platforms. We’ve already held dedicated sessions for female candidates in partnership with women’s networks within the parties to provide extra guidance. We want to ensure we’re doing everything possible to help them connect with their constituents, free from harassment.

Finally, we’re working with the Government to distribute to every candidate via returning officers in the General Election the safety guides we have put together, to ensure we reach everyone not just those attending our outreach sessions. Our safety guides include information on a range of tools we have developed:

• For example, public figures are able to moderate and filter the content that people put on their Facebook Pages to prevent negative content appearing in the first place. People who help manage Pages can hide or delete individual comments. 
• They can also proactively moderate comments and posts by visitors by turning on the profanity filter, or blocking specific words or lists of words that they do not want to appear on their Page. Page admins can also remove or ban people from their Pages. 

We hope these steps help every candidate to reach their constituents, and get the most from our platforms. But our work doesn’t stop there.

The second area our team focuses on is promoting civic engagement. In addition to supporting and advising candidates, we also, of course, want to help promote voter participation in the election. 

For the past five years, we’ve used badges and reminders at the top of people’s News Feeds to encourage people to vote in elections around the world. The same will be true for this campaign. 

We’ll run reminders to register to vote, with a link to the gov.uk voter registration page, in the week running up to the voter registration deadline. 

On election day itself, we’ll also run a reminder to vote with a link to the Electoral Commission website so voters can find their polling station and any information they need. This will include a button to share that you voted. 

We hope that this combination of steps will help to ensure both candidates and voters engaging with the General Election on our platforms have the best possible experience.

Today, ahead of Veterans Day, we’re introducing a new resource for military members and veterans to help them continue to build their community, find job opportunities and enhance their digital skills through Facebook. The Military and Veterans Hub will provide online safety tips, resources for finding jobs and digital skills training through a new partnership with SCORE.

“There are many resources and tools across Facebook aimed at helping veterans, like the Military recruiting page and the Jobs Tool,” said Frank Diaz, a veteran and owner of Tin Hut BBQ. “This Military and Veteran Hub is going to make it a lot easier for veterans to access these tools by consolidating all of these resources in one place. As a veteran who hires other veterans for my business, I know that it’s going to be immensely helpful to veterans-run or affiliated businesses all over the US.”

Teaming up with SCORE 

At Facebook, we’re always looking for ways to support the military and veteran community. That’s why we’re partnering with SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer expert business mentors to provide education and mentorship to military members, veterans and their families who want to become entrepreneurs. 

This program includes:

• A mentor match that connects military members and veterans with a cohort of SCORE’s experienced business mentors who are also US veterans. 
• A veteran-focused educational toolkit for launching a business, including steps for developing a business plan. 
• Veteran-focused interactive workshops for guidance on starting a business. SCORE’s veteran mentors will also be available to all attendees after the workshop for continued support through all stages of startup and growth. 

“We are grateful for all that our nation’s veterans have done for us, and are proud to help veterans and their families who want to start their own business,” said Bridget Weston, CEO of SCORE. “Data shows that entrepreneurs with access to a mentor are five times more likely to succeed in business, and we’re excited to be working with Facebook to provide our veteran community with the support and guidance they need to succeed.”

Supporting Veteran-Owned Businesses

The new hub and partnership with SCORE build on our ongoing support of the military and veteran community. In the past month, we’ve held events for the veteran community such as Boost with Facebook in San Diego where we trained more than 1,400 people on how to use our digital tools and a Boost Leaders Network event to support military and veteran businesses in Hawaii.

New AR/VR Program for Veterans Seeking Job Opportunities at Facebook 

We’re launching a 12-month career development pilot program focused on AR/VR Silicon Engineering for veterans with a background in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Computer Science in order to help us solve global challenges.

In addition, we offer a Military Skills Translator to help people find Facebook careers relevant to their military experience. We also support our veteran employees through internal mentorship programs, groups and, for the first time this year, an internal Facebook Vets and Allies Leadership Summit.

Explore our new Military and Veterans Hub to learn more about the free tools and resources we offer.

Catalogs are a mobile storefront for businesses to showcase and share their goods so people can easily browse and discover something they would like to buy. Previously businesses had to send product photos one at a time and repeatedly provide information — now customers can see their full catalog right within WhatsApp. This makes business owners look more professional and keeps customers engaged in the chat without having to visit a website.

Like Agradaya, a sustainable herbs and spices business in Indonesia. We gave the founder Andhika Mahardika early access to the catalog feature and he told us that it makes it easier for customers to learn about their products, know the prices and view the images of what they offer — which is essential for serving their customers better.

For each item in its catalog, a business can add information including price, description and product code. WhatsApp hosts these catalogs to save valuable storage space on the phones of both businesses and customers.

Creating a catalog with the WhatsApp Business app takes just a few simple steps. Watch this video to get started:

The catalog feature is available today to businesses using the WhatsApp Business app on both Android and iPhone in Brazil, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the UK and the US. It will be rolling out around the world soon. We can’t wait to hear how catalogs are helping small businesses connect with their customers and grow.

Facebook started as a single app. Now, 15 years later, we offer a suite of products that help people connect to their friends and family, find communities and grow businesses.

Today, we’re updating our company branding to be clearer about the products that come from Facebook. We’re introducing a new company logo and further distinguishing the Facebook company from the Facebook app, which will keep its own branding.

The new branding was designed for clarity, and uses custom typography and capitalization to create visual distinction between the company and app.

People should know which companies make the products they use. Our main services include the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Portal and Calibra. These apps and technologies have shared infrastructure for years and the teams behind them frequently work together.

We started being clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook years ago, adding a company endorsement to products like Oculus, Workplace and Portal. And in June we began including “from Facebook” within all our apps. Over the coming weeks, we will start using the new brand within our products and marketing materials, including a new company website.

This brand change is a way to better communicate our ownership structure to the people and businesses who use our services to connect, share, build community and grow their audiences.

This week we filed suit in California against domain name registrar OnlineNIC and its privacy/proxy service ID Shield for registering domain names, or web addresses, that pretended to be affiliated with our company, such as www-facebook-login.com and facebook-mails.com. By mentioning our apps and services in the domain names, OnlineNIC and ID Shield intended to make them appear legitimate and confuse people. This activity is known as cybersquatting and OnlineNIC has a history of this behavior.

We don’t want people to be deceived, so we track and take action against suspicious and misleading domains, including those registered using privacy/proxy services that allow owners to hide their identity. There are tens of millions of domain names on the web that have been registered using these privacy/proxy services. We proactively report instances of abuse to domain name registrars and privacy/proxy services and often collaborate with them to take down these malicious domains.

In many instances, however, domain name registrars and privacy/proxy services will not investigate or respond to abuse reports, which enables bad actors and delays our efforts to fight fraud and abuse.

This was the case with OnlineNIC and ID Shield, and that’s why we’ve taken this action to stop this type of domain name abuse. This lawsuit is one more step in our ongoing efforts to protect people’s safety and privacy.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO said, “Sue has been a wonderful and thoughtful voice on the board for six years, and I’m personally grateful to her for everything she has done for this company.”

Dr. Desmond-Hellmann joined Facebook’s board in March 2013 and served as Lead Independent Director from June 2015. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg discussing the reasons for her departure, Dr. Desmond-Hellmann said:

“I remain positive about Facebook and the mission to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Facebook’s Shareholders require a Board of Directors that is fully engaged and committed to address the critical issues confronting Facebook at this time.

Unfortunately, increasing demands from my CEO role, my extended family, and my own health make it no longer possible for me to commit the necessary time and energy required to properly serve Facebook and its shareholders. I wish you and the management team, Facebook’s employees, my fellow Directors, and Facebook shareholders best wishes for future success.”

Facebook’s independent directors expect to name a replacement Lead Independent Director over the coming months. The board’s Compensation & Governance Committee, which will consist of Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, will assist in this process. In addition, the Board of Directors is expanding the committee’s charter to incorporate a director nominating function that will empower the committee to lead the board’s efforts to identify and nominate director candidates in the future.

Facebook’s current board members are: Mark Zuckerberg; Peggy Alford, Senior Vice President, Core Markets, PayPal Holdings, Inc.; Marc L. Andreessen, Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz; Kenneth I. Chenault, Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst; Sheryl K. Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook; Peter A. Thiel, Co-founder and Partner, Founders Fund; and Jeffrey D. Zients, CEO, The Cranemere Group.

Today, we removed three networks of accounts, Pages and Groups for engaging in foreign interference — which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign actor — on Facebook and Instagram. They originated in Russia and targeted Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya. Each of these operations created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing. Although the people behind these networks attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation connected these campaigns to entities associated with Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who was previously indicted by the US Justice Department. We have shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners.

We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.

We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing challenge. We’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead. That means building better technology, hiring more people and working closer with law enforcement, security experts and other companies.

What We’ve Found So Far

Today, we removed 35 Facebook accounts, 53 Pages, seven Groups and five Instagram accounts that originated in Russia and focused on Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. The individuals behind this activity used a combination of fake accounts and authentic accounts of local nationals in Madagascar and Mozambique to manage Pages and Groups, and post their content. They typically posted about global and local political news including topics like Russian policies in Africa, elections in Madagascar and Mozambique, election monitoring by a local non-governmental organization and criticism of French and US policies.

• Presence on Facebook: 35 Facebook accounts, 53 Pages, 7 Groups and 5 Instagram accounts.
• Followers: About 475,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages and around 450 people followed one or more of these Groups and around 650 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
• Advertising: Around $77,000 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in US dollars. The first ad ran in April 2018 and the most recent ad ran in October 2019.

We found this activity as part of our internal investigations into Russia-linked, suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in Africa. Our analysis benefited from open source reporting.

Below is a sample of the content posted by some of these Pages:

Page Name: “Sudan in the Eyes of Others” Caption Translation: Yam Brands, the company that owns the KFC franchise stated that it intends on opening 3 branches of its franchise in Sudan. The Spokesman of the company based in the american state of Kentucky, Takalaty Similiny, issued a statement saying that the branches are currently under construction and will open in mid November.

Translation: The Police of the Republic of Mozambique announced today that nine members of RENAMO were detained for their participation in the attempt to remove urns from one of the voting posts in the district of Machanga, Sofala and for having vandalised the infrastructure. According to the spokesperson for PRM, that spoke in a press-conference in Maputo, the nine people are accused of having lead around 300 RENAMO supporters that tried to remove the urns during counting at the Inharingue Primary School.

Translation: President of Central African Republic asked Vladimir Putin to organize the delivery of heavy weapons. Wednesday, in Sochi, the president Faustin-Archange Touadera asked his counterpart Vladimir Putin to increase the military assistance to the Republic, asking specifically for the supply of heavier weapons. “Russia is giving a considerable help to our country. They already carried out two weapons deliveries, trained our national troops, trained police officers, but for more effectiveness, we need heavy weapons. We hope that Russia will be able to allocate us combat vehicles, artillery canons and other killing weapons in order for us to bring our people to safety” said Touadera.
However, there is still an issue which is blocking us to implement this. The embargo on Central African Republic was not fully lifted in order for Russia to implement the plans of Touadera. Until now, it is only possible to supply weapons with a caliber less than 14,5 mm.
The embargo do not stop armed groups to get illegally heavy weapons for themselves, which is not helping the efforts of the government to establish peace.
We ask the Security Council of United Nations to draw attention on what their (sometimes reckless) sanctions are bringing.

We also removed 17 Facebook accounts, 18 Pages, 3 Groups and six Instagram accounts that originated in Russia and focused primarily on Sudan. The people behind this activity used a combination of authentic accounts of Sudanese nationals, fake and compromised accounts — some of which had already been disabled by our automated systems — to comment, post and manage Pages posing as news organizations, as well as direct traffic to off-platform sites. They frequently shared stories from SUNA (Sudan’s state news agency) as well as Russian state-controlled media Sputnik and RT, and posted primarily in Arabic and some in English. The Page administrators and account owners posted about local news and events in Sudan and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Sudanese-Russian relations, US-Russian relations, Russian foreign policy and Muslims in Russia.

• Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 17 Facebook accounts, 18 Pages, 3 Groups and 6 accounts on Instagram.
• Followers: About 457,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 1,300 accounts joined at least one of these Groups and around 2,900 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
• Advertising: Around $160 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in Russian rubles. The first ad ran in April 2018 and the most recent ad ran in September 2019.

We found this activity as part of our internal investigations into Russia-linked, suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region.

Below is a sample of the content posted by some of these Pages:

Translation (first two paragraphs): “American and British intelligence put together false information about Putin’s inner circle… a diplomatic military source said that American and British intelligence agencies are preparing to leak false information about people close to the president, Vladimir Putin, and the leadership of the Russian defense ministry.“

Page title: “Nile Echo”
Post translation (first paragraph only): French movements to abort Russian and Sudanese mediation in the Central African Republic…

Translation: #Article (I am completely sure that the person in the cell is not [ousted Sudanese leader Omar] al-Bashir, but I don’t have physical evidence proving this) Aml al-Kordofani wrote: The person resembling al-Bashir who is sitting behind the bars..who is he? The double game continues between the military and the sons of Gosh (referring to former Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Abdullah Mohamed Saleh) according to the American plan. The American plan employs psychological operations, as we mentioned earlier, and are undertaken by a huge office within the US Department of Defense.

Finally, we removed a network of 14 Facebook accounts, 12 Pages, one Group and one Instagram account that originated in Russia and focused on Libya. The individuals behind this activity used a combination of authentic accounts of Egyptian nationals, fake and compromised accounts — some of which had already been disabled by our automated systems — to manage Pages and drive people to an off-platform domain. They frequently shared stories from Russian state-controlled media Sputnik and RT. The Page admins and account owners typically posted in Arabic about local news and geopolitical issues including Libyan politics, crimes, natural disasters, public health, Turkey’s alleged sponsoring of terrorism in Libya, illegal migration, militia violence, the detention of Russian citizens in Libya for alleged interference in elections and a meeting between Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army, and Putin. Some of these Pages posted content on multiple sides of political debate in Libya, including criticism of the Government of National Accord, US foreign policy, and Haftar, as well as support of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Russian foreign policy, and Khalifa Haftar.

• Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 14 Facebook accounts, 12 Pages, one Group and one account on Instagram.
• Followers: About 212,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, 1 account joined this Group and around 29,300 people followed this Instagram account.
• Advertising: About $10,000 USD paid for primarily in US dollars, euros and Egyptian pounds. The first ad ran in May 2014 and the most recent ad ran in October 2019.

Based on a tip shared by the Stanford Internet Observatory, we conducted an investigation into suspected Russia-linked coordinated inauthentic behavior and identified the full scope of this activity. Our analysis benefited from open source reporting.

Below is a sample of the content posted by some of these Pages:

Page name: “Voice of Libya” Post translation: The Government of National Accord [GNA] practices hypocrisy … the detention of two Russian citizens under the pretense that they are manipulating elections in Libya. But in reality, no elections are taking place in Libya now. So the pretense under which the Russians were arrested is fictitious and contrived.

Page title: “Libya Gaddafi” Post translation: “Why was late Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi killed? Everyone was happy in Libya. There are people in America who sleep under bridges. There was never any discrimination in Libya, and there were not problems. The work was good and the money, too.”

Page name: “Voice of Libya” Post translation: First meeting between Haftar and Putin in Moscow. Several sources reported on the visit of the army’s commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, to Moscow, where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, to discuss developments in the military and political situation in Libya. This is Haftar’s first meeting with the Russian president. He has previously visited Russia and met with senior officials in the foreign and defense ministries, and they are expected to meet again.

Page title: “Falcons of the Conqueror” Post translation: Field Marshal Haftar: Libyans decide who to elect as the next president, and it is Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi’s right to be a candidate

At Facebook, we believe that women should have equal access to all of the economic opportunity, education and social connection the internet provides.

“It’s a civil liberties and civil rights issue to be able to access loved ones any time, access information, access job searches,” says Cindy Southworth. “The world is out there, and you need access to technology to access that world.”

Southworth is the Executive Vice President of the US-based National Network to End Domestic Violence. As a member of the Facebook Safety Advisory Board, her organization works with us to make our platform a safer, more welcoming place for women. Southworth has spent almost 30 years working with domestic violence victims and is keenly aware of how social media can be both an abuser’s tool and a victim’s lifeline — which is why at Facebook, we work to reduce the abuse and harassment that can keep women offline while building tools and resources to empower them online. 

We take a comprehensive approach to making our platform a safer place for women, including writing clear policies and developing cutting-edge technology to help prevent abuse from happening in the first place.

The Facebook Community Standards and the Instagram Community Guidelines outline the rules for what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. They’re developed by our policy teams and include rules against behaviors that disproportionately impact women, such as the sharing of non-consensual intimate imagery, which is illegal in many places around the world. They also include rules against harassment, like sending multiple unwanted messages to a person who’s made it clear that they don’t want to receive them. 

As we update and refine our policies to keep pace with changes happening online and offline around the world, we regularly engage with outside experts. In July, for example, our policy team expanded our hate speech policy on targeted cursing, profanity used to attack a private individual, to include female-gendered terms. In crafting our recommendation, we spoke to experts around the world, including anthropological and cognitive linguists, women’s rights organizations and safety organizations. 

These rules apply to everyone who uses Facebook and Instagram. And because cultural norms around things like sexuality, friendships and women’s roles in society can differ so widely, these conversations with global experts help us understand how abuse and harassment manifest differently in different places.

“The general themes when it comes to women’s safety tend to be the same around the world,” says Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Policy Management. “But we find that when we look at specific countries or regions, the actual types of behavior are very localized.”

For example, harassers will commonly try to humiliate a woman by sharing images of her that would be considered shameful in her community. In the US, a harasser might select a nude photo or a video of the woman engaging in a sexual activity. We’d remove the image according to our standards on the sexual exploitation of adults. In some countries, a woman could be shamed or put at risk if someone shared a photo of her ankle, or a photo of her walking with a man who isn’t a family member. If someone shares this in a way that makes clear they’re trying to humiliate her, that would fall under our standards on bullying and harassment.  

To account for this wide spectrum of harassment types, our rules need to be thoughtful and similarly comprehensive.

In addition to policies, we develop technology to fight behavior that threatens to keep women offline. We offer a number of tools to help people control their experience on Facebook, such as ignoring unwanted messages and blocking other people without them being notified. Victims and their allies can also report violating behavior, and we will remove anything that doesn’t follow our policies.

Global research helps us better serve people around the world in this area as well. In India, both people who use our services and safety advocates told us that some women in the country choose not to share profile pictures that include their faces because they’re concerned that someone might try to take those photos and impersonate them in ways that would shame or dishonor them or their families. So we developed an optional profile picture guard that gives women more control over who can download or share their pictures. This is available in India, Pakistan, Egypt and other countries where women have similar concerns. 

Blocking, reporting and other user-facing tools are only part of the solution and their success relies on people knowing to seek them out and understanding how to use them — plus feeling comfortable enough to use them. A victim who’s already feeling anxious or threatened may not want to trigger a harasser for fear of retribution. Sometimes, the behavior isn’t visible to the woman it affects: an ex might share non-consensual intimate images in a private group, for example. Or a bully might set up a fake account in a woman’s name and operate it without her knowledge, adding members of her community as friends. That’s why Facebook is not only investing in digital literacy programs and improved safety resources but we’re also investing in technology that can find violating content proactively — and in some cases, prevent it from being shared in the first place.

Facebook’s work to prevent the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, or NCII, serves as a clear example of this comprehensive approach to deploying technology. In 2017, we launched a pilot program to help potential victims prevent their intimate images from appearing on Facebook and Instagram without their consent. As part of this program, people who fear their images are in danger of being shared can reach out to a victim advocate organization, where someone will help them securely submit those photos to Facebook. On our end, we create digital fingerprints of the images before destroying them. The images are never seen by anyone at Facebook before they are deleted. Then, using photo-matching technology, we block the images from being posted to Facebook and Instagram. 

Of course, the pilot program only works if the potential victim is aware that their images are at risk of being shared. In cases where an intimate image is shared to Facebook and Instagram and then reported to us after the fact, we can minimize the damage by using the same combination of digital fingerprinting and photo-matching technology so they don’t get shared again. 

But we wanted to do even more. That’s why we developed machine-learning and artificial-intelligence techniques to proactively detect nude or near-nude images and videos shared without permission — without anyone having to report them. 

Comprehensive approaches to complicated problems, like the one we’ve developed for NCII, require a lot of input and a lot of expertise, and we know we can’t do this alone. That’s why we host roundtable discussions around the world with women’s safety experts, women who have experienced some of these issues and women’s advocates to ensure we’re including their feedback, perspectives and expertise in our work.

One example of this kind of collaborative work is the annual Global Safety and Well-Being Summit, which brought together over 100 organizations from 40 countries this year to discuss women’s safety as well as other topics such as suicide prevention and raising children in the digital era.

Nighat Dad, Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan, attended the 2019 summit in New York, and has worked with Facebook on issues related to harassment, including the sharing of non-consensual intimate images.

“Online gender-based violence — it’s not a technology problem, it’s a societal problem,” said Dad. “The people who are working on the ground, they need to work together on this and also keep telling social media platforms how they can improve their products, how they can improve their reporting mechanisms. It’s not just one person who can address the issue, or one organization or one institution, we all need to work together.”

Resources

• Community Standards: Facebook’s Community Standards outline what is and is not allowed on Facebook, and apply around the world to all types of content.
• Safety@Facebook: Resources, tips and tools for staying safe on Facebook.

Learn more

• Promoting Safety with Policy, Product and Operations: This short video explains how three Facebook teams work in lockstep to moderate content and keep abuse off the platform.
• “What Kind of Society Is it Going to Be?” Vanity Fair published an exclusive, detailed look at how Facebook’s policy team shapes the rules on what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook.
• A Research-Based Approach to Protecting Intimate Images: An overview of the research we’ve done to review and improve our response to the sharing of non-consensual intimate images.

We created Facebook’s Preventive Health tool to connect you to health resources and checkup reminders, making it easier to take control of your health. Because we know health data is particularly personal, we took extra steps to protect your privacy and collect a limited amount of information necessary to make the tool function and improve it over time.

Who sees my information and activity?

Your activity within Preventive Health will not be posted publicly or shared with others. Information you provide is securely stored and access is restricted to a group of people at Facebook who work on the product or maintain our systems. We don’t share personal information about your activity in Preventive Health with third parties, such as health organizations or insurance companies, so it can’t be used for purposes like insurance eligibility. 

What choices and controls do I have?

You can decide whether you want to use the Preventive Health tool. The tool will give you options to set reminders for your future checkups and mark them as done, but it will not give us access to your actual test results. If you choose, you can share the tool with your friends or family through Messenger or News Feed to encourage them to try it, but doing so will not share your activity within the tool.

If you have Location Services turned on, we can use that information to show you Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in your area. If not, we default to showing a location based on your current city. You can control whether your device shares precise location information with Facebook Products via Location Services, a setting on your mobile device. 

How does this impact data collection and the ads I see?

Preventive Health uses your age and sex to suggest checkups recommended by health organizations. Your age and sex is based on your Facebook profile by default, but you can change these in the Preventive Health tool.

To help you keep track of your checkups, we collect information you provide, such as when you set reminders or mark a screening as done. We also log more general activity, like frequency of clicks for a specific button, which allows us to understand how the tool is being used, in order to improve it over time. 

We don’t show ads based on the information you provide in Preventive Health — that includes things like setting a reminder for a test, marking it as done or searching for a healthcare location. As always, other actions that you take on Facebook could inform the ads you see, for example, liking the Facebook page of a health organization or visiting an external website linked to from Preventive Health.

• We’re working with US health organizations to offer a Preventive Health tool that connects people to health resources and checkup reminders. 
• People can use the tool to find affordable places to receive care, set reminders to schedule tests, mark when tests are completed, and more.

By Freddy Abnousi, MD, Head of Healthcare Research

Many of today’s leading health threats aren’t ones that science or medicine can solve alone. Changing trends in communication and unequal access to care mean we need new solutions and partnerships to overcome these global challenges.

Take the issue of blood shortages. Every few seconds, someone in the world needs blood. But people often aren’t aware of shortages and don’t know where to donate. To address this, we launched a feature in the US, India, Brazil, Bangladesh and Pakistan that makes it easy to sign up as a donor on Facebook and get notified when nearby blood banks are in need. So far, more than 50 million people have signed up to donate.

Another area we’re exploring is preventive health. Tens of millions of people in the US are missing out on recommended preventive care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventive measures have the potential to detect disease early when it’s most treatable and, in some cases, prevent it from developing. Yet factors such as awareness, access and cost create barriers to testing for many people.

To help, we’re working with US health organizations to offer a new Preventive Health tool that connects people to health resources and checkup reminders. Our initial focus is on the top two leading causes of death in the US: heart disease and cancer, (according to CDC) as well as the flu, a seasonal illness that affects millions each year. The resources available in the tool are provided by the American Cancer Society, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — organizations recognized for their education and expertise in these areas.

“Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women around the world and in many cases it is 100% preventable. By incorporating prevention reminders into platforms people are accessing every day, we’re giving people the tools they need to be proactive about their heart health.” – Richard Kovacs, MD, President of the American College of Cardiology

How Preventive Health Works

In the US, people can search for Preventive Health in the Facebook mobile app and find out which checkups, such as cholesterol tests or mammograms, are recommended by these health organizations based on the age and sex they provide. Reminders for flu shots will also appear at the appropriate time of year. 

The tool allows people to mark when tests are completed, set reminders to schedule future tests and tell loved ones about the tool to increase awareness of preventive care. People can also learn more about each checkup and find affordable places to receive care.

“We’ve contributed our content and resources to the Facebook Preventive Health tool to empower Americans to take the first step to know about and take action to lower blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, each of which has been shown to increase the chance of a longer, healthier life and reduce the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.” – Eduardo Sanchez, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Prevention at the American Heart Association

“One of the main reasons people don’t get screened for cancer is that they don’t realize their own risk. We hope this program will help by building awareness about important recommendations from expert organizations.” – Richard Wender, MD, Chief Cancer Control Officer at the American Cancer Society

Most of the preventive measures recommended by the health organizations we’re working with, such as blood pressure tests, are free of charge with insurance coverage, but we know many people do not have insurance. To help people get affordable care, Preventive Health offers a way to find Federally Qualified Health Centers near them. These centers are located in underserved areas and provide care to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.

People can also use Preventive Health to find convenient locations that offer flu shots, such as grocery stores, pharmacies and urgent care clinics.

“Flu vaccines can have wide-ranging benefits beyond just preventing the disease, such as reducing the risk of hospitalization, preventing serious medical events for some people with chronic diseases, and protecting women during and after pregnancy. New tools like this will empower users with instant access to information and resources they need to become a flu fighter in their own communities.” – Nancy Messonnier, MD, Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, CDC

Over time, we’ll work with additional organizations to include more resources and expand to other countries.

Privacy Matters

Health is particularly personal, so we took privacy and safety into account from the beginning. For example, Preventive Health allows you to set reminders for your future checkups and mark them as done, but it doesn’t provide us, or the health organizations we’re working with, access to your actual test results. Personal information about your activity in Preventive Health is not shared with third parties, such as health organizations or insurance companies, so it can’t be used for purposes like insurance eligibility. 

We don’t show ads based on the information you provide in Preventive Health — that includes things like setting a reminder for a test, marking it as done or searching for a healthcare location. As always, other actions that you take on Facebook could inform the ads you see, for example, liking the Facebook page of a health organization or visiting an external website linked to from Preventive Health.

To learn more about Preventive Health and privacy, see this post.

Our Efforts Across Health

Preventive Health and Blood Donations are just two of the ways we can help people advocate for their own health and help others:

• According to our blood bank partners in India and Brazil, 20% of voluntary, walk-in blood donors are coming from Facebook.
• Disease Prevention Maps from Facebook help nonprofits and universities working in public health get ahead of disease outbreaks, plan vaccination campaigns and reach vulnerable communities more effectively.
• People turn to health support groups on Facebook after being diagnosed with or while managing a health condition, to connect with others who have had similar health experiences and find information and support. 

We know there’s more we can do to help people, and we’ll continue to partner with organizations to provide access to resources and reach people in diverse communities.

More on Preventive Health: https://preventivehealth.facebook.com/

American Cancer Society: https://www.cancer.org/

American College of Cardiology: https://www.acc.org/

American Heart Association: https://www.heart.org/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/