Facebook renews promise to lawmakers: we're ready for elections

Facebook is sending a signal to Capitol Hill that it's taking the integrity of its social network seriously during the US primary election season. One of the main messages aimed to be delivered to Capitol Hill: Facebook is taking serious steps to protect its network, flush with 2.2 billion users, from misinformation and other political ploys on the platform. "In retrospect, we were too slow to anticipate and build teams and tools around each of the forms of misuse," said Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer. He called 2018 "an incredibly important year for the company for social media for the internet and democracy." Facebook plans to double the number of people working on safety and security to 20,000 by the end of 2018, a goal the company announced late last year as the revelations of divisive political ads placed by fake accounts emerged.