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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made securing the 2020 US election a top priority. He regularly met with an election team of more than 300 people across his company to prevent misinformation from spreading on the social network. HE she asked civil rights leaders for advice on protecting voter rights.

The core selection team at Facebook, Renamed to Meta last year, has since disbanded. About 60 people currently focus primarily on elections, while others devote their time to other projects. They meet with another manager, not Mr. Zuckerberg. And the CEO hasn’t spoken to civil rights groups recently, with some even asking him to pay more attention to the November midterm elections.

Four Meta employees who were aware of the situation said protecting the election was no longer Mr. Zuckerberg’s top concern. Instead, focused transform your company People without the authority to speak publicly said that he has become a provider of the immersive world of the metaverse, which he sees as the next frontier of growth.

The shift in emphasis on Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, could have far-reaching consequences as faith in the US electoral system reaches a fragile point. this Hearings on the January 6 Capitol riots He underlined how dangerous the elections could be. And dozens of political candidates running this November on the wrong premise He said that with social media platforms continuing to be an important way to reach American voters, the 2020 election of former President Donald J. Trump was taken away from him.

Election misinformation remains common online. This month, “2000 mulesA film falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump was shared widely on Facebook and Instagram, garnering more than 430,000 interactions, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In broadcasts about the film, commentators said they expected election fraud this year and warned against postal voting and the use of electronic voting machines.

Other social media companies have also withdrew some of their focus on elections. Twitter, which stopped tagging and removing election misinformation in March 2021, $44 billion sales to Elon MuskIt was stated that 3 employees were aware of the situation. Mr Musk has suggested that he wants fewer rules on what can and cannot be sent on the service.

“Companies should step up their efforts to prepare to preserve the integrity of elections for the next few years rather than backing out,” said Katie Harbath, CEO of Anchor Change, a consulting firm that previously led election policy at Meta. “Many issues remain, including candidates suggesting that the 2020 election was rigged, and we don’t know how they are addressing them.”

Meta with Twitter banned Mr Trump After the riot in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, its platforms have worked over the years to limit political lies on their site. Meta spokesperson Tom Reynolds said the company has taken a “comprehensive approach to how elections have played out on our platforms since the US 2020 election and dozens of global elections since then.”

According to Mr. Reynolds, Meta has hundreds of people on more than 40 teams focused on selection work. He said that with each election, the company “builds teams and technologies and develops partnerships to eliminate campaigns of manipulation, limit the spread of misinformation, and maintain industry-leading transparency around political ads and pages.”

Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said the company is continuing “our efforts to preserve the integrity of the election conversations and to inform the public about our approach.” For the midterms, Twitter has tagged political candidates’ accounts and provided information boxes on how to vote in local elections.

Given the global nature of their platforms, how Meta and Twitter handle elections has implications beyond the US. President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, where the general elections will be held in October, recent suspicions About the country’s election process. Latvia, Bosnia and Slovenia are also holding elections in October.

“People in the US are almost certainly treated like Rolls-Royce when it comes to any integrity on any platform, especially when it comes to US elections,” said Sahar Massachi, chief executive of the think tank Integrity Institute and a former Facebook employee. “And so, as bad as it is here, think how bad it is anywhere else.”

Facebook’s role in potentially falsifying elections emerged after 2016. Russian agents used the site spreading provocative content and dividing American voters in the US presidential election. In 2018, Mr. Zuckerberg stated before Congress that election security was his top priority.

“The most important thing I care about right now is to ensure that no one interferes with the 2018 elections in various parts of the world,” he said.

Election experts said the social network has since been instrumental in curbing foreign efforts to spread disinformation in the US. But Facebook and Instagram still struggle with conspiracy theories and other political lies on their sites, they said.

In November 2019, Mr. Zuckerberg hosted a dinner for human rights leaders at his home and pledged to make electoral integrity the main focus by holding phone and Zoom conference calls with them.

He also met regularly with a selection team. More than 300 employees from various product and engineering teams were asked to install new systems to detect and eliminate false information. Facebook has also acted aggressively to remove toxic content, Banning QAnon conspiracy theory posts and groups in October 2020.

At the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $400 million to local governments to fund survey workers, pay rent for polling places, provide personal protective equipment and other administrative costs.

One week before the November 2020 elections, on Meta froze all political ads to limit the spread of lies.

But while there were successes – the company kept foreign election interference off the platform – it struggled over how to deal with Mr Trump, who used his Facebook account to support allegations of voter fraud. After the January 6 riot, Facebook blocked Mr Trump from posting. He suitable for reinstatement in January 2023.

Last year, Frances HaugenA Facebook employee whistleblower filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, accusing the company of removing election security features immediately after the 2020 election. Facebook says it prioritizes growth and engagement over security.

In October, Mr. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would focus on metadata. The company was restructured with more resources devoted to improving the online world.

Meta also renewed its selection team. According to employees, the number of employees, which was more than 300 in 2020, has dropped to about 60, whose focus is solely on elections. Hundreds of others attend election-related meetings and cross-functional teams where they work on other issues. The divisions that create virtual reality software, an important component of the metadata warehouse, have expanded.

Mr. Zuckerberg said he no longer meets on a weekly basis with those focused on election security, although the four employees received their reports. Instead, they meet Nick CleggHead of global affairs at Meta.

Several civil rights groups said they noticed Meta’s shift in priorities. Mr. Zuckerberg is not involved in discussions with them as he once was, nor are other top Meta executives.

“I’m worried,” said NAACP chief Derrick Johnson, who spoke with Mr. Zuckerberg and Meta’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg ahead of the 2020 election. “Away from sight, it seems to be out of mind.” (Mrs Sandberg He announced that he will be leaving Meta. this fall.)

Rashad Robinson, chairman of Color of Change, another civil rights group, said he had sought advice from Ms Sandberg and Mr Zuckerberg’s organization to prevent election misinformation in 2020. He said his suggestions were largely ignored and he had not contacted either manager for more than a year. Now she interacts with Roy Austin, Meta’s vice president of civil rights.

Meta added that Mr. Austin meets with civil rights leaders every three months and is the only major social media company to have a civil rights executive.

In May, 130 civil rights organizations, progressive think tanks and public interest groups wrote a letter To Mr. Zuckerberg and senior executives of YouTube, Twitter, Snap and other platforms. They have called for them to remove publications about the lie that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election and to slow the spread of election misinformation before the midterm elections.

Yosef Getachew, director of the nonprofit public advocacy organization Common Cause, whose group is working on misinformation about the 2020 election on social media, said the companies were not responding.

“The Big Lie is front and center in the midterms, with so many candidates using it to pre-announce that the 2022 election will be stolen,” he said, citing politicians’ recent tweets. Michigan and arizona who falsely said that the dead voted Democrats. “Now is not the time to stop pushing the Big Lie.”