MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED Nov. 4, 2021; 3:23 p.m.) — Social media giant Facebook said it would implement platform policies that would prohibit inappropriate posts during the upcoming local and national elections.
Asked if Facebook is applying the same community standard policies against posts on terrorism for posts related to the 2022 polls, Facebook said it would “take more proactive measures."
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“Obviously, we don’t allow any kind of bad content. When there is an election coming up, we take more proactive measures,” Nawab Osman, Facebook head of Counter-Terrorism and Dangerous Organization, Asia-Pacific said during a press briefing last week.
“We plan to ensure that the content is not abused by individuals or groups that want to be disruptive to the electoral process,” he added.
Osman also said that they do not wait for an election to happen before they enforce measures prohibiting inappropriate posts such as hate speech and calls to violence, among others.
“We enforce all the time, 24/7 we have AI (artificial intelligence) and human reviewers working,” he said.
According to the Facebook exec, there is a disparity in the number of posts reviewed on the platform.
“As I’ve said. we are better at terrorism as compared to hate [speech]. The numbers show it,” Osman said.
He explained that while hate has been around longer, it has manifested itself in a way that we’ve never seen before in the last five years.
Due to this, Osman said the AI is also not capturing or reviewing as much hate posts because “it hasn’t learned as much.”
“We are beginning to recruit people with that level of expertise in that particular speech which we thought we didn’t have before,” he said.
Osman cited the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, blamed for fuelling a riot at the US Capitol on January 6 this year as an example of a new movement that emerged on the platform.
In view of this, Osman said Facebook created new designation categories to deal with similar groups. He said there is a team called a “violent-inducing conspiracy network” to deal with QAnon as well as a “Militant social movement” to deal with some of the groups involved at the US Capitol riot.
The Facebook executive said that while they are not 100% there to combat all these groups and posts, he said they made new categories to address new challenges and newer trends they are finding on their platform. There is room for improvement, he said.
Osman assured the public that the Facebook Philippines team is working day and night to prepare for the 2022 elections.
The Philippines remains a high priority for Facebook and the company will soon make announcements on their efforts specific to the elections.
The local and national polls are set May 9 next year.