Elections 2024: How Facebook and WhatsApp’s owners plan to stop misinformation

With about two weeks left before the national and provincial elections, tech giant Meta is developing a tailored approach to help preserve the integrity of the South African elections on its social media platforms.

South Africans will go to the polls on 29 May in what is expected to be a highly contested election since the dawn of democracy 30 years ago with the governing African National Congress’ (ANC) share of the vote expected to potentially fall below 50%… and possibly reach as low as 45%.

Meta has created an Election Resource Centre on its website specifically for the South African elections, which provides government, political and non-profit partners with information such as how to secure their accounts and how to best reach and engage voters with authoritative information.

Harmful content

Balkissa Ide Siddo, Meta public policy director for Sub-Saharan Africa said they have developed a comprehensive approach to elections on their platforms over many years.

Ide Siddo said Meta has around 40 000 people working on safety and security, with more than $20 billion invested in teams and technology in this area since 2016.

“This includes 15 000 content reviewers who review content across Facebook and Instagram in more than 70 languages.

“We want people to be able to talk openly on our apps about the issues that matter to them, whilst still feeling safe. Our Community Standards publicly explain what content is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram, and cover a number of areas relevant to elections,” she said.

ALSO READ: Google supporting election integrity in South Africa

Misinformation

Ide Siddo said that as election day approaches, Meta will activate a South Africa-specific Elections Operations Centre focused on identifying potential threats across our apps and technologies in real time.

“This initiative will bring together experts from across our company, including those based in South Africa, from our intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, public policy and legal teams.

“We remove the most serious kinds of misinformation from Facebook, Instagram and Threads, such as content that could contribute to imminent violence or physical harm, or that is intended to suppress voting,” Ide Siddo added.

Partners

Meta said in South Africa they work with Africa Check and AFP, who have the capability to fact check in English, and a number of local languages, including Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho and Setswana.

In preparation for the elections, Meta has signed the “Voluntary Framework of Cooperation to Address Disinformation in the 2024 National and Provincial Elections in South Africa” – an agreement to collaborate with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) and other industry partners, where possible, to mitigate the risks associated with elections.

“As part of this collaboration, we have been working alongside one of our fact checking partners in the region, Africa Check, to train staff at the IEC to be able to better detect misinformation. We have also partnered with both the IEC and Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), to train over 160 government communicators on Meta’s approach to combating misinformation, as well as the various safety and security features they can use on our platforms.

“Last year, we appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications (PPCC), alongside other platforms, to engage policymakers on our state of readiness for the elections. Building on this, we kicked off a series of sessions this year for the PPCC, to build understanding of how to keep public officials and public organisations safe and secure online,” Ide Siddo said.

Empowering voters

Last month, Meta ran an anti-hate speech and misinformation campaigns on its platform, as well as on local radio which were designed to educate people about identifying and reporting hate speech and misinformation online.

Ahead of election day, Meta will launch its Voter Information Unit and Election Day Reminder feature on both Facebook and Instagram.

These election features provide users with neutral reminders, redirecting them to the IEC website, where they can find authoritative information about how to vote on election day.

ALSO READ: IEC and TikTok to ensure election integrity in SA