Given its ownership of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Meta is generally the biggest digital communication company out there. Hence, it is hard to deny the ability of these platforms to shape the public conscience to a certain extent and their role could become even more critical during events that may have a huge impact on a country’s future such as elections.
This is something that is not lost on Meta who is already gearing up for the upcoming 15th Malaysian General Election (GE15). During a recent briefing with media members, its Head of Politics and Government Outreach for APAC, Roy Tan insists it is part of Meta’s objective to ensure that it is harder for anyone to interfere with elections through the company’s platforms while continuing to allow their users have their voices heard.
The company has also roped in more than 90 independent fact-checking organizations all over the world to further verify reported posts in more than 60 languages and for Malaysia, it has chosen to work with the renowned news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Once the content is rated as False, Altered, or Partly False, its reach and distribution within Facebook will be greatly reduced.
On Instagram, such content would be taken out of the Explore section and would be less prominent in Feed as well as Stories. There would be a label accompanying it too that includes a link that provides additional context from the fact-checker organization.
Meta claimed that this policy managed to reduce the number of forwarded messages by more than 25%. As for frequently forwarded messages, there has also been a 70% reduction across the globe; hence, it is not surprising to see Meta continues to rely on the policy.
Members of the public can also utilize the Ad Library tool to search for elections and political advertisements across Facebook. As part of Facebook’s policy, all social issues, elections and political ads would be viewable through the tool for seven years.
The policy also requires advertisers including those in Malaysia to go through an authorization process to make sure that their identity and location are real. These ads also carry a “Paid for by” disclaimer on them, so that Facebook users can easily identify them and the entity that was responsible for the ads.
These entities include government agencies, election watchdogs, non-governmental organisations and even political candidates. On the broader scale, there is also the We Think Digital program that has been around since 2020 in collaboration with Teach for Malaysia and Universiti Malaya to raise awareness of digital literacy and online safety among students.
