This week, former Facebook public policy director Kate Harbath wrote an op-ed in The New York Times warning that the social media giant isn’t prepared to handle the onslaught of hate speech and misinformation surrounding global elections this year. With upcoming contests in France, the U.S., Kenya, Australia, and more, Harbath says that Facebook must do more to invest in its safety and security efforts.

“There’s still time for Facebook to commit to a publicly available road map that outlines how it plans to build up its resources to fight misinformation and hate speech around the world,” Harbath wrote. “Algorithms that find hate speech and election-related content; labels that give people more context, like those in the United States applied to content that questioned the election results; and efforts to get people accurate information about where, when and how to vote should all be a part of the baseline protections Facebook deploys across the globe.”

Harbath did give Facebook credit for investing $13 billion into these efforts since the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, but noted that creating the technical infrastructure to fight misinformation is “only half the battle.” She said that Facebook must now got a step further and invest in human talent around the world who are equipped to handle issues in their specific countries. Of course, it’s unlikely that this can be accomplished by 2024. However, Facebook has the resources at its disposal to make this a reality — and it must if it wants to stop the spread of dangerous misinformation.

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