META Meta Platforms Inc

By Sara Germano 

MUNICH -- Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company will work with the German ministry for information security in a broad effort to guide policy here and throughout Europe on election interference.

The collaboration will build upon previous work between the social network and the regulator during the 2017 federal elections in Germany, Ms. Sandberg said. The effort is part of continued work by Facebook to strengthen its platform against interference.

The Integrity & Security Initiative will be a cooperation between Facebook, the German office and other companies and research partners, Ms. Sandberg said, ahead of European Union parliamentary elections this spring. The German cybersecurity watchdog will spearhead the initiative, a person familiar with the matter said.

A spokesman for the German Federal Office for Information Security didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. It wasn't immediately clear which other companies or researchers may be participating in the initiative.

Ms. Sandberg has come under fire from investors, regulators and users in recent months for a series of management missteps, including criticism of Facebook's handling of Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, though the company's board of directors affirmed its support for her in a letter in December.

Speaking on Sunday at the DLD Conference on digitization, business, and culture in Munich, Ms. Sandberg emphasized that the company has removed thousands of accounts as it works to prevent election interference.

Facebook had been focused on preventing phishing and hacking attempts in 2016, she said, but "what we didn't understand was a new and more insidious threat: rather than states trying to take people's data, they were trying to sow disinformation and dissent into societies. Now that we know what this threat is, we've built up big defenses against it."

The work against attempts to influence elections on Facebook is one of five areas the social network is working to improve, Ms. Sandberg said, including investing in safety and security, cracking down on fake accounts and misinformation, user control of their own information and improving Facebook's transparency.

Facebook has also come under scrutiny in Germany for its data-collection practices. In 2017, the national federal cartel office released preliminary findings that accused the social network of abusing its dominant market position to collect data from users. A final decision by the antitrust enforcer hasn't been released.

Write to Sara Germano at sara.germano@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 20, 2019 12:38 ET (17:38 GMT)

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