EU Elections: Meta Readies Team to Counter Disinformation

Facts

• Social media giant Meta on Monday announced plans to tackle misinformation and artificial intelligence (AI) risks in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June.¹
• The owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp will reportedly deploy its intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy, and legal experts to battle election interference.²
• Earlier this month, Meta joined the 'Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections,' which also includes Google and X, reportedly to combat AI content intended to suppress voting.³
• Meta's announcement comes days after China-based video-hosting platform TikTok announced measures designed to enable EU voters to distinguish between fact and fiction on the service.¹
• Under the EU's content moderation laws, social media entities must endeavor to limit systemic risks to elections and to avoid being manipulated by bots and disinformation campaigns.⁴
• According to the latest UNESCO-Ipsos global survey on the impact of online disinformation and hate speech, 68% of participants in 16 countries where general elections are to be held in 2024 believe social media is the widest source of disinformation.⁵

Sources: ¹www.euractiv.com, ²US News & World Report, ³Al Jazeera, ⁴POLITICO and ⁵ipsos.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Meta. Meta's actions show other social media behemoths that going hand-in-hand with democracies is the right way forward in a world teeming with various threats to government systems that value free will and choice. Though fact-checking is a small part of the larger role platforms can play in safeguarding sacred electoral processes, the company is doing the appropriate thing by taking responsibility as a stakeholder in the society under threat.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Wired. Meta, a firm that boasts around 3B users across different platforms, has failed to protect users from misinformation. In the 2020 US election, for instance, it allowed — inadvertently or otherwise — the false narrative of a "hijacked election" to spread via Facebook and Instagram. It even displayed ads questioning the election results. The company has much to answer for, and it remains to be seen whether this new commitment will result in Meta effectively quashing disinformation.