Facebook did not detect advertisements containing disinformation regarding the upcoming 2022 election in Brazil, an investigation has discovered.
Human rights group Global Witness mentioned that it submitted 10 adverts containing false details about the Brazilian normal election on 2 October, together with one concentrating on indigenous teams that instructed individuals to vote on the fallacious date.
The group mentioned that it was notably involved by the way the advertisements have been submitted and accepted by Facebook. The Portuguese-language advertisements have been submitted from exterior of Brazil and paid for utilizing a non-Brazilian cost methodology from an account that had not been verified by Facebook’s advert authorisation course of.
The report follows comparable criticism in direction of Facebook regarding elections in Myanmar, Ethiopia and Kenya, in addition to current US presidential elections and the 2016 Brexit referendum within the UK.
“Facebook knows very well that its platform is used to spread election disinformation and undermine democracy around the world,” mentioned Jon Lloyd, a senior adviser at Global Witness.
“Despite Facebook’s self-proclaimed efforts to tackle disinformation – particularly in high stakes elections – we were appalled to see that they accepted every single election disinformation ad we submitted in Brazil.”
The group referred to as on Facebook to urgently improve its content material moderation capabilities and be certain that moderators perceive the political and cultural context of the upcoming elections in Brazil. It additionally urged Facebook’s mum or dad firm, Meta, to permit verified third-party auditing of its platforms.
Facebook instructed The Independent that it has “prepared extensively” for the Brazil election however didn’t touch upon the Global Witness investigation.
“Our efforts in Brazil’s previous election resulted in the removal of 140,000 posts from Facebook and Instagram for violating our election interference policies, and 250,000 rejections of unauthorised political ads,” a spokesperson mentioned.
“We are, and have been, deeply committed to protecting election integrity in Brazil and around the world.”
Source: www.impartial.co.uk
