Social network giant Facebook Inc. ($FB), headquartered in California, wants users in the United States to start communicating more with elected officials. As a result, they have launched three new tools this week in attempt to meet this end goal.
The feature includes constituent badges, constituent insights and direct targeting, all of which are directed at helping local officials connect with their constituents. This will help officials develop a better understanding of the issues at hand and what matters most to the community. Constituent badges, which are an opt-in feature, will allow users to let the public know that they live in an area that the represented by the government. Essentially this feature will help to determine which district a constituent lives in based on the address provided. If, for example, the constituent moves out of the area, the badge will disappear. The goal behind this feature is to prevent fake addresses and voters showing up on the podium. Plus, to prevent fraud from occurring, the number of times a social media user can change their location is limited.
Through first hand experience from constituents, Facebook plans to help officials figure out what new stories are trending in their district, which will help them establish connections with their voters. Facebook is in the middle of developing a new Page Insights feature which allows for the elected official to add the trending news story to their page along with their own comments on the topic, according to TechCrunch. At the same time, district targeting lets politicians get feedback from voters via the platform through the use of polls or posts, which are specifically designed for the people that live in their district. Earlier in the year, Facebook released a tool called Town Hall, which lets social media users find, follow and contact elected officials on all three levels: local, state and federal.
As of late, especially throughout the U.S election, Facebook has been scrutinized for being a platform used to spread fake news stories and propaganda. This is one of the main reasons that the company plans to create even more features which will help to provide factual information to its users. As mentioned, Facebook was particularly criticized during the United States election and many still believe that the company played a defining role in influencing the decision of voters. These tools are Facebook’s first step in cleaning up its news feed.
Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost to Republican Donald Trump, stated just last week that Facebook was filled with misleading information about her and her campaign during the run up to the 2016 election and as a result many people based their decision on these stories. She called out Facebook and stated that they need to work on handling the information that gets shared on their site.
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