With 4 states and one Union Territory feeling the election heat, social media giant Facebook has stepped up its efforts to curb the spread of misinformation for the duration of the ongoing poll campaign. Facebook stated in a weblog post that it has been taking numerous measures, such as decreasing the distribution of content deemed to be hate speech. It also stated that restrictions will be imposed temporarily on the accounts that have lately and repeatedly violated the company’s policies and have been distributing malicious content. Facebook came beneath fire for the duration of the US elections as properly as the Cambridge Analytica incident of 2018 in which information of lakhs of Indian was exposed. Since then, the social media platform has been taking different measures to curb the spread of fake news as properly as to shield the information of its customers.
Facebook stated that there are particular forms of content, such as hate speech, that could lead to imminent, offline harm and to lower the danger of problematic content going viral and potentially inciting violence amid the elections, it will considerably lower the distribution of such content that its proactive detection technologies identifies as probably hate speech or violence and incitement. It stated that the content will be lowered if it violates the company’s policies, but its distribution will stay restricted till a final choice is taken on the sort of content. According to government information, India has 53 crore WhatsApp customers, 41 crore Facebook customers, and 21 crore customers of Instagram.
Facebook stated in its weblog that it has learnt lessons from previous elections in India and globally, and is taking measures to boost civic engagement, combat hate speech, limit misinformation and take away voter suppression. The social media giant stated that it is closely working with the election authorities, such as setting up a higher priority channel to take away content that breaks guidelines.
Facebook pointed out that its policies prohibit voter interference, defined as objectively verifiable statements such as misrepresentation of dates and techniques for voting (for instance text to vote). “We also remove offers to buy or sell votes with cash or gifts. Additionally, we also remove explicit claims that you will contract COVID-19 if you vote,” it explained.
In 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections, Facebook had come out with an ad transparency tool. “One of the most important new product changes we’ve launched in this effort is our political ad transparency tools, giving people a clearer picture of who is placing the ads they see. Anyone who wants to run an ad in India related to politics has to first confirm their identity and location, and give more details about who paid for or published the ad,” it had stated.
In the exact same year, Facebook had set up a higher priority channel with the Election Commission of India (ECI) for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to obtain content-connected escalations.
The organization will provide Election Day reminders to give voters correct info and encourage voters to share this info with close friends on Facebook and WhatsApp. The organization also performs with third-party truth-checkers about the planet, such as eight partners in India, to provide men and women with further context about the content they’re seeing on Facebook. In addition to English, these eight partners truth-verify in 11 Indian languages such as Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Assamese.