Social media good for democracy? Facebook admits it can't make that guarantee

Facebook has warned that it can't offer any assurance that social media is on balance good for democracy, but the company says it is trying to do what it can to stop alleged meddling in elections by Russia or anyone else.

The sharing of false or misleading headlines on social mediahas become a global issue, after accusations that Russia triedto influence votes in the United States, Britain and France.

Moscow denies the allegations.

Facebook, the largest social network with more than two billion users, addressed social media's role in democracy inblog posts from a Harvard University professor, Cass Sunstein,and from an employee working on the subject.

"I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined tooutweigh the negatives, but I can't," Samidh Chakrabarti, aFacebook product manager, wrote in his post on Monday.

Facebook, he added, has a "moral duty to understand howthese technologies are being used and what can be done to makecommunities like Facebook as representative, civil andtrustworthy as possible."

Contrite Facebook executives were already fanning out acrossEurope this week to address the company's slow response toabuses on its platform, such as hate speech and foreigninfluence campaigns.

U.S. lawmakers have held hearings on the role of socialmedia in elections, and this month Facebook widened an investigation into the run-up to Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership.

Chakrabarti expressed Facebook's regrets about the 2016 U.S.elections, when according to the company Russian agents created 80,000 posts that reached around 126 million people over twoyears.

The company should have done better, he wrote, and he saidFacebook was making up for lost time by disabling suspectaccounts, making election ads visible beyond the targetedaudience and requiring those running election ads toconfirmtheir identities.

Twitter and Alphabet's Google andYouTube have announced similar attempts at self-regulation.

Chakrabarti said Facebook had helped democracy in ways, suchas getting more Americans to register to vote.

Sunstein, a law professor and Facebook consultant who also worked in the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, said in a blog post that social media was a work inprogress and that companies would need to experiment withchanges to improve.

Another test of social media's role in elections lies aheadin March, when Italy votes in a national election already markedby claims of fake news spreading on Facebook.