Meta announces to work with ECI for free and fair elections

As India prepares for the 18th General Elections, Meta will accelerate its efforts to limit misinformation, and enhance transparency on its platforms to support free and fair elections.

Meta has around 40,000 people globally working on safety and security, with more than $20 billion invested in teams and technology. This includes 15,000 content reviewers who review content across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in more than 70 languages — including 20 Indian languages.

The company is also working closely with the Election Commission of India via the Voluntary Code of Ethics”, joined in 2019, which gives the Commission a high priority channel to flag unlawful content to Meta.

“We are dedicated to responsible use of new technologies like GenAI and collaborating with industry stakeholders on technical standards for AI detection, as well as combating the spread of deceptive AI content in elections through the Tech Accord,” the company said.

It added, “As for all major elections, we’ll also activate an India-specific Elections Operations Center, bringing together experts from across the company from our intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy and legal teams to identify potential threats and put specific mitigations in place across our apps and technologies in real time.”

Regarding online misinformation, the company said that it removes the most serious kinds of misinformation from Facebook, Instagram and Threads, such as content that could suppress voting, or contribute to imminent violence or physical harm.

“During the Indian elections, based on guidance from local partners, this will include false claims about someone from one religion physically harming or harassing another person or group from a different religion. For content that doesn’t violate these particular policies, we work with independent fact-checking organisations,” the company said.

At present, the company has 11 fact-checker partners pan India covering 15 languages.