Facebook is expanding its efforts to fight "fake news" and misinformation ahead of elections later this year in the EU, India, Israel and Ukraine.
In a blog post published Monday, the social media company said it will expand its political ad transparency tools and increase resources devoted to removing fake accounts and fact-checking in a push to crack down on misinformation in political campaigns.
Facebook also announced it would open two new regional operations centers focused on "election integrity" in its Dublin and Singapore offices. Ahead of the U.S. midterm and Brazil elections last fall, Facebook created a similar "war room," where teams assembled to try to root out fake news and accounts.
"These teams will add a layer of defense against fake news, hate speech and voter suppression, and will work cross-functionally with our threat intelligence, data science, engineering, research, community operations, legal and other teams," Facebook said in the blog post.
Facebook said more than 30,000 people are working on safety and security across the company, triple the number in 2017.
In a separate blog post devoted to European Parliament elections this May, also published Monday, Facebook said it will launch new tools in March that will require advertisers to be authorized before purchasing political ads.
The social media giant has struggled to curtail misinformation and abusive content on its platform in elections around the world. Facebook has admitted foreign operatives published thousands of posts in an effort to sway the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The company has faced ongoing backlash from lawmakers around the world for failing to contain the spread of fake information in election campaigns.