In just over two weeks South Africans will head to the polls to cast their vote in the local government elections.

As we’ve seen in other parts of the world, social media has been a catalyst for all manner of ills whether it be election disinformation or hate-filled content.

So what are big social media firms doing to insure that when South Africans head to the polls on 1st November, they are well informed and able to make their mark without having been influenced by disinformation?

One platform that has become a breeding ground for disinformation is Facebook and while it has been doing its best to fight that scourge, the fight is a constant one, even here on the southern most tip of Africa.

“This municipal election is important to us at Facebook and we’re using the lessons we’ve learned from more than 200 elections around the world to help ensure the integrity of the election in the days leading up to polling day in South Africa,” says head of public policy for Facebook in Southern Africa, Nomonde Gongxeka-Seopa.

Facebook is taking a three-pronged approach to protecting election integrity. These are:

• Detecting and removing harmful content such as hate speech or incitement of violence
• Combatting misinformation
• Transparency about who is behind political ads on Facebook.

While none of this is altogether new, it’s good to see that Facebook is taking a stance here in South Africa but let’s dive a bit deeper into how each of those prongs will be applied as regards the run-up to the elections.

How Facebook is dealing with harmful content?

As you may be aware, Facebook has rules around hate speech, harassment and incitement of violence and it has invested over $13 billion over the last few years to improve its technology and workforce in those areas.

As we saw in Myanmar a few years ago though, Facebook also needs to insure that it has a workforce that understands the local context of the language used and the languages themselves of course.

The good news is that Facebook has experts who review content that are well versed in South African content. The important thing is that if you see something wrong, you should report it so that Facebook can take action.

Transparent political ads

Since June, Facebook has implemented a policy whereby anybody wanting to run political ads must go through a verification process. These ads then labelled with a disclaimer so that you know who paid for them.

“All of the political ads you’ll see regarding this election will be stored in our publicly-accessible Ads Library for seven years. In the Ads Library, you can see what ads are running, what types of people saw them and how much was spent on the ad. To give people more control over their Facebook experience, we also offer a way for people to opt out of these verified ads,” says Gongxeka-Seopa.

In addition, Facebook says it has trained political parties and the Independent Electoral Commission on its best practices, transparency rules, Community Standards and election integrity.

In addition, political advertisers have been informed about how best to reach and engage supports.

The constant fight against disinformation

In May 2020, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg infamously said that Facebook was not an arbiter of the truth and the firm appears to be holding onto that thinking.

With that having been said, Facebook does take action against false information that could cause harm and if that information breaks its numerous policies.

“If a piece of misinformation doesn’t break one of these policies we work to reduce its distribution, so fewer people see it. Of course, getting this right is an immense challenge. That’s why we’ve built a global network of more than 80 independent fact-checkers, including AFP and AfricaCheck in South Africa. They are capable of reviewing potentially false content, in Zulu, English, Afrikaans, Sotho, Northern Sotho, Setswana, and Northern Ndebele languages. When these fact-checkers rate something as false, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it and add a warning label with more information for anyone who sees it. Pages and Groups that repeatedly share false information that has been debunked will also see their distribution reduced and their ability to advertise and monetize reduced,” explains Gongxeka-Seopa.

Once again, if you see posts which violate Facebook Community Standards, report them.

The proof of the pudding is of course in the eating and while we don’t know how well Facebook’s protections will work. It’s great that it’s doing something and actively working to fight those who want to turn elections on their head for personal gain.

[Image – Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash]