Facebook has invested 13 billion in security since 2016

In the past few weeks, one company has featured prominently in critical tech coverage: Facebook. In addition to the usual problems, which the company has not really wanted to get under control for several years, reports in the Wall Street Journal gave the image of the group the rest. Now they want to put themselves back in the right light.

In a new publication, Facebook says it has invested around $ 13 billion in security-enhancing mechanisms since the 2016 elections. A total of 40,000 employees now work in this area; in October 2019 there were 35,000 employees. These focus on moderating the content, the majority are externally employed people.

One would also like to learn from past mistakes and react more proactively instead of reactively to problems and risks in the future. Because so far, internal investigations have repeatedly uncovered weaknesses that were brought into the focus of the individual development teams far too late.

In the future, security and the protection of personal data should be discussed early in the product development cycle. For this purpose, experts should be consulted on these topics and have an influence on the actual development. In the advertising business, work should continue on a serious image. In the first half of the year, 3.5 million ads were rejected due to a lack of important information.

Instagram is initially only indirectly affected, but the network would like to work on its algorithm in the future and nudge the user in the direction of “healthier” content. We will probably only find out in the next few years whether the announced changes will have an effect on the problems in the future.

Own opinion:

Facebook sees its own problems and is working on them. What sounds good at first is a fact that should actually be clear. For years the company has done too little in this area, now you have to prove that you can earn user trust again.

Via Bloomberg Technology