With major elections scheduled in several countries around the world, including India and the United States, social media platforms are under increased scrutiny to provide safety and security. The threat of social media abuse through misinformation, AI-generated content, deepfakes, and more looms large.
Since the beginning of 2024, the Meta company owned by Mark Zuckerberg has announced several measures and initiatives to secure global elections on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
Meta claims that it has developed a comprehensive approach to elections on its platform over the years. But no two elections are the same. The latest announcement comes as South Africa’s elections are just around the corner. “Our team leverages the lessons learned from South Africa’s last election and our involvement in over 200 elections around the world to create a customized platform to maintain the integrity of South Africa’s elections on our platform. We are developing a new approach,” said Public’s Barkissa Ide Sid. Policy Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past eight years, Meta has deployed industry-leading transparency tools for election and political advertising, developed comprehensive policies to prevent election interference and voter fraud, and created It says it has built the largest third-party fact-checking program. To combat the spread of misinformation.
The company claims to have approximately 40,000 employees working on safety and security and has invested more than $20 billion in teams and technology in this area since 2016. This includes his 15,000 content reviewers who review content on Facebook and Instagram in over 70 languages.
