Facebook Protect, a security monitoring platform offered to political officials during the 2020 US elections, will be offered to more people in 2021. Axios reports that the company’s head of security policy, Nate Gleicher, says that Protect will be offered to journalists, human rights advocates and activists. This will include real-time monitoring for political accounts related to overseas elections to watch for hack attempts.In addition, Facebook will hand out physical security keys to notable figures to help them enable two-factor authentication.
Gleicher says that more than 70 percent of people involved with the 2020 election had two-factor activated. And these hardware keys will also be available for regular Facebook users to buy, which they can then register to their accounts online.
Gleicher says that Facebook is working to protect accounts, since compromised pages can be used to spread harm. That may not be enough, however, to deflect criticism which will get even louder when Joe Biden takes office in January.Back in September, his (then) campaign manager wrote that the platform was boosting hyper-partisan news accounts that actively sowed disinformation. This is likely to dominate the political discussion during the next four years as both sides of the aisle look to reform the law that underpins the internet.
