Also, as part of measures to protect the integrity of the elections scheduled to take place in 2023, Meta has said it is determined and making concrete efforts to combat the spread of misinformation and to make political advertising more transparent.
Meta made this known while addressing the media at a roundtable on 2023 elections held in Lagos last Wednesday.
It said its goal of achieving this will continue in the lead up to, during, and after voting and that it would build on Meta’s experience and learning from supporting elections across Sub-Saharan Africa and globally.
Meta said its approach had also been informed by conversations with human rights groups, NGOs, local civil society organisations, regional experts and local election authorities – to help ensure the safety of people using Meta’s family of apps, customise election strategies for Nigeria, maintain the integrity of its platforms and keep users safe.
Speaking at the event, Meta’s Head of Public Policy for Anglophone West Africa, Adaora Ikenze said, “We know we have an important responsibility when it comes to helping to keep people safe during the elections. Using lessons from the past including input from experts and policymakers across the national spectrum, we’ve made substantial investments in people and technology to reduce misinformation, remove harmful content on our platforms, fight voter interference and promote civic engagement during the elections. We continue to work closely with election authorities and local partners in Nigeria to ensure we’re preparing for the specific challenges in Nigeria and taking appropriate steps to stay ahead of emerging threats.”
She said some of the steps taken to prepare for the Nigerian elections include: A dedicated cross functional team spread across the world as well as locally focused on the Nigerian elections. This, she said, includes a number of people from Nigeria and people who have spent significant amounts of time in the country, recognising that local understanding is critical.
“The team also includes individuals with global expertise in misinformation, hate speech, elections and disinformation. These teams are working hard to prevent any abuse of our services before, during and after Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. Locally, we also have staff who reside in Nigeria and work in the public policy, and public policy programmes and communications,” she said.
According to her, another step is keeping people safe.
She said,”Since 2016 we have quadrupled the size of the global teams working on safety and security to about 40,000 people, and have invested more than $16 billion in teams and technology in this area. This also includes over 15,000 content reviewers, who are located across the globe, in every major time zone. Collectively, these reviewers are able to review content in more than 70 languages- including, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.”
She said they are still working for the election by outlining the Community standards that publicly explain what is and isn’t allowed on their platforms to prioritise integrity on platforms during and after elections.
Another step according to her is the taking of aggressive steps to fight the spread of misinformation.
She said that Meta as an organisation knows it is important for people to see accurate information on Facebook and Instagram. “We’re removing misinformation which could lead to imminent violence or physical harm and working with our fact-checking partners in Nigeria – AFP, Africa Check and Dubawa – to review and rate potentially false content on our platforms, label it, and place it lower in our feed, so fewer people see it.
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
