Source: Arab News
Repots this week specify how Meta’s Facebook was unable to spot extensive misinformation in connection to the 2022 Brazil election, in the form of ads. According to a Global Witness report, this inability of Facebook is the continuity of it not getting hold of items that are against its policies.
These ads reportedly comprised untrue information regarding the forthcoming Brazilian election. Mainly, it consisted of promotions of incorrect election dates, inaccurate ways of voting, along with doubting the election’s validity, and the main system of the country.
Notably, this comes across as the fourth instance when a test by the nonprofit based in London indicated the tech giant’s inability to get hold of glaring breach of the regulations of its most successful social network. Previously, the organisation handed over ads during the three prior cases, which comprised violent hate speech. This was mainly to check if the AI or the human viewing controls of the platform would catch them, which clearly it failed to do so.
Facebook’s role in the Brazilian elections:
According to Global Witness’ senior advisor Jon Lloyd, the social network considers Brazil as one of the ‘priority’ nations where it is making extensive investments to deal with such disinformation based on elections. Owing to this, the organisation thought of testing out Meta’s systems, even with time in hand to do something about it.
The Brazilian election is set to take place on October 2 in the middle of increasing concerns and disinformation intimidating the discrediting of the process. Due to its incredibly popular reputation in the country, Facebook assured that it had made elaborate preparations for the scheduled elections.
Meta stated how they brought forward tools for the promotion of trustworthy information, and documenting post connected to the election. Along with it, they stated how they had put in place a direct way for the ‘Superior Electoral Court’ to send the company content that could be possibly harmful for reviewing, and go on to work with authorities of the country. Two years ago, Facebook had made an authorisation process necessary for advertisers wishing showcase ads regarding politics.
However, the London-based nonprofit stated how Meta violated regulations during the submissions of test ads which were never published. Moreover, the advertiser group did not need to place a disclaimer of ‘paid for by,’ and did not utilise a payment method from Brazil. All this while, Facebook has claimed that these particular rules were established to work towards the prevention of misuse of the network through the spread of misinformation.