On 23 January 2019, the leadership of the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine met with representatives of Facebook.
Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine Yuriy Stets, Deputy Minister Dmytro Zolotukhin and State Secretary of the Ministry Artem Bidenko, as well as Facebook’s Public Policy Director for Central and Eastern Gabriella Cseh and Facebook’s Public Policy Lead for Elections Anika Geisel discussed cooperation to ensure integrity of electoral processes in Ukraine.
Minister Yuriy Stets thanked Facebook for cooperation: “We highly value our joint work with Facebook in the field of information security, in particular verification of the Ukrainian authorities’ pages, counteracting fake news and efforts to ensure non-interference in the elections in Ukraine, both presidential and parliamentary.”
Deputy Minister Dmytro Zolotukhin stressed the importance of preventing the use of Facebook for information attacks and influences. “We are grateful to Facebook for the incredible work that the company has made by detecting and removing multiple related fake profiles, groups and pages. It is important for us because one of the two detected Russia-controlled networks was being used for information operations in Ukraine,” he said.
Gabriella Cseh noted that Facebook is serious about violations of its Community Standards and is planning to strengthen security measures during the elections in Ukraine.
Anika Geisel spoke about one of the functions that has already become available to Ukrainian users on the eve of the electoral race. From now on, one can access information about what country administrators of popular Facebook pages come from and what advertising they are running.
Earlier, in the summer of 2018, the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine and Facebook agreed to deepen bilateral communication.
