Facebook holds its own law above national laws as critics slam inaction
In spite of the 48-hour ban on electioneering activity before polls opened yesterday, thousands of partisan political posts coupled with paid political advertisements were being shared by hundreds on social media, election watchdogs said.
“As of now, we have recorded 556 complaints related to Facebook in addition to 112 active paid political advertisements in posts. Some of the reported contents were removed by Facebook management once we took it up through the Election Commission but this situation is far from satisfactory,” Rohana Hettiarachchie, Executive Director of the People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), said late on Friday.
In the run- up to the election, two PAFFREL teams monitored a real- time “dashboard” that showed the most trending posts from more than 11,000 Facebook pages and groups. The data came from Sinhala, Tamil and English pages run by political parties or on behalf of presidential candidates, gossip pages, meme pages, key influencers etc. Facebook has nearly 6 million active users in Sri Lanka.
“Once our technical teams identified pages with content that spread hate speech, misinformation, or violated election laws, our legal officers scrutinised the material before sending it to the Election Commission for the commission to take it up with Facebook management,” Mr. Hettiarachchie said.
“The action taken by Facebook on the reported posts was very low when looking at the number of hate speech posts that were removed. This is because Facebook bases its considerations on its ‘ Community Standards’, not the local law.”
Mr. Hettiarachchie said it was imperative that Facebook be more active in tackling hate speech and misinformation campaigns and removing political advertisement during the silent period.
The Centre For Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) noted there was very active and well-targeted campaigning on Facebook through posts and political advertisements and by social media influencers.
“Even after the silent period became effective we noticed that a
significant amount of posts and political ads were still on Facebook and bein shared. We brought this to the attention of the Election Commission but are yet to see any results,” Manjula Gajanayake, CMEV’s National Coordinator, said.
The European Union’s Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), which includes a five- member team in Sri Lanka dedicated to monitoring social media, also said it experienced difficulties over getting content removed from Facebook despite setting up a special mechanism with Facebook management to target misinformation and hate speech.
Election Commission officials said Facebook acted quickly in maintaining its Community Standards over hate speech but not over misinformation campaigns reported to it.
The officials said they have been receiving hundreds of complaints. Most were only screenshots of posts. They urged people to include the links to such posts in order to quickly track them down and prevent them from being widely shared.
Days ago, a Facebook post showing a youth burning his father’s polling card in protest at his political leanings went viral while postal voting was in progress. Before the Election Commission could track the original uploader, thousands of Facebook users shared the post online, commenting about it on public and private groups.
“Even my photograph is being used for misinformation campaigns,” National Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya complained to the Sunday Times. “We have asked Facebook to take down these campaign posters but their management is acting very slowly. It is a very sad situation.”
He expressed grave concerns about what he called Facebook’s failure to cooperate with authorities on hate speech and misinformation during a closely contested poll.
A senior official attached to the Election Commission’s Social Media Monitoring Unit spoke bluntly under condition of anonymity: “What Facebook wants is our money here. It just doesn’t care about the platform’s potential negative impact on elections or its role in influencing voters. We spent many hours in discussions over tea but achieved nothing satisfactory.”
Facebook, the world’s richest social media site, has come under severe criticism after credible evidence emerged about the influencing role it played during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and the Brexit referendum in Britain.