Meta: Securing Kenya's 2022 General Elections Through Social Media Platforms
Meta is investing in people and technology to minimize the spread of disinformation and remove dangerous content from our apps in order to help ensure a safe and secure general election in Kenya. To better grasp the local scene, the team devoted to the country's election includes Kenyan specialists and people who are well connected with the region.
Meta employs a combination of artificial intelligence, human inspection, and user reports to rapidly identify and delete anything that violates our Community Standards. Among the Community Standards are stringent regulations prohibiting hate speech, voter suppression, harassment, and encouraging violence. Meta also developed more powerful detection technologies, increased the size of worldwide safety and security team to over 40,000 people, and employed more content reviewers to check material across applications in more than 70 languages, including Swahili.
They organized a working group for the security of female public figures during the Kenya elections in response to local problems related to rising abuse of female public figures. They trained women members of Parliament, aspirants, and human rights defenders to use the safety tools and resources to ensure a safer experience across the technologies, in collaboration with local civil society organizations such as Kenya Women Parliamentary Association (KEWOPA), Pollicy, and UN Women. They are also working with participants to better understand the gender-based insults used online in local languages, with the goal of addressing them during the elections.
Meta introduced new WhatsApp regulations in 2021, including limiting the number of individuals to whom you may send a highly forwarded WhatsApp message to only one chat at a time. Since then, the number of widely forwarded messages on WhatsApp has decreased by 70%. They have implemented a forward restriction on Messenger, which means that messages can only be forwarded to five persons or groups at a time. They acknowledge that restricting forwarding is an effective strategy to halt the spread of viral disinformation and bad content that can cause offline harm.
They remove the most dangerous types of disinformation from Facebook and Instagram, such as anything designed to discourage voting or that might lead to imminent violence or physical injury. According to local partners, this will notably include false claims that persons with guns are protecting voting stations, false claims that polling stations have been destroyed, and photographs and videos posted out of context portraying ballot stuffing or violence during the Kenyan elections.
They've collaborated with independent third-party fact-checkers in Kenya — AFP, Pesa Check, and Africa Check — who examine content in both English and Swahili for information that doesn't breach these specific criteria. When they examine and rate a piece of material as fake, we decrease its dissemination and add a warning label with extra information.
They also make certain that political advertisements placed in Kenya are listed in our Ads Library so that everyone can see what ads are running, view targeting information, and find out how much money was spent. People may also customize their feeds and opt out of seeing political advertisements.
The election-related work is centered on assisting in the formation of informed and involved communities. They'll have a "I Voted" sticker on Instagram in Kenya. On Election Day, they'll encourage people around the country to vote with a message at the top of their Facebook Feed.
Go Vote on the 9th of August 2022!
(About Facebook)
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