Why did Facebook build a 'war room'?

The move follows revelations in the last two years that Russian trolls and other bad actors used Facebook, and in particular its advertising system, as a way to attempt to manipulate American voters in 2016.

Activity in the social media giant’s new war room at its California campus is ramping up as the 2018 midterm elections approach. The room brings leaders from Facebook’s legal, policy and security teams into the same room where they can work together to fight back against misinformation on the platform.

Facebook Director of Elections and Head of Civic Engagement Samidh Chakrabarti told CNN that the war room is “really the culmination of two years of massive investments we've made both in people and technology to ensure that our platforms are safe and secure for elections. So it builds upon work that we've done to crack down on fake accounts, on combating the spread of fake news on our platforms.”