Instagram Leans on Facebook to Root out Election Misinformation

(Bloomberg) -- Instagram is relying on parent Facebook Inc.’s help to root out the people and organizations that will try to manipulate its users with misinformation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

“We are just as big a target as Facebook if not a larger target,” Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said at an event at the company’s New York offices. “This isn’t a problem that ends.”

Mosseri said more engineers work on safety and election-interference issues at Facebook than work on Instagram overall. His strategy is to leverage Facebook’s resources to work on Instagram-specific issues. The two social networks have become more tightly integrated in the last two years, especially through a planned joining of their messaging products.

Facebook has faced intense criticism for the way Russian operatives were able to spread misinformation across the platform, influencing the 2016 presidential election. The company recently announced a takedown of such campaigns from Iran and Russia on its properties, including Instagram. The tactics on Instagram tend to be different -- they’re based on memes and fast-growing communities within popular hashtags. In the 2016 election, Russia’s troll farm, the Internet Research Agency found that it had more engagement from users on Instagram than it did on Facebook, according to a report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by New Knowledge in 2018.

Still, Facebook has borne the brunt of the backlash.

“Let’s be honest Facebook’s brand is in a really tough place right now,” Mosseri said. But he wants to make it clearer that Instagram is part of Facebook to reduce confusion, and not separate the brands, “as much as it might be convenient to do so from the Instagram side.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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