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Five people familiar with the debates said Facebook has approached academics and policy experts about forming a commission to advise on global election-related issues; body.
The proposed commission may decide on issues such as: feasibility of political advertisements Speaking on the condition of anonymity since the talks are confidential, the people said what should be done about the false information about the election. Facebook is expected to announce the commission this fall in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, but efforts are preliminary and could still scatter.
The two said that outsourcing election issues to a panel of experts could help Facebook curb bias criticism from political groups. The company has exploded in recent years by conservativesFor allowing by civil rights groups and Democrats, as well as those who accuse Facebook of suppressing their voices political misinformation to inflammation and spread online. The two said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t want to be seen as the sole decision maker on political content.
Facebook declined to comment.
If an election commission were formed, it would mimic the step Facebook took when it created what it calls itself in 2018. Supervisory Board, a collection of journalism, legal and policy experts who decided whether the company was right to remove certain posts from their platforms. Facebook has allowed some content decisions to be forwarded to the Oversight Board for review, allowing it to show that it didn’t decide on its own.
Positioning its Supervisory Board independently, Facebook appointed people on the panel and pays them through a trust.
Supervisory Board’s highest-profile decision is Facebook’s impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump After the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th. At the time, Facebook chose to ban Mr Trump’s account indefinitely, which the Oversight Board later said “not available” because the time frame was not based on any rules of the company. The board asked Facebook to try again.
In June, Facebook responded by saying it would ban Mr Trump from the platform. at least two years. The Oversight Board separately considered more than a dozen other cases of content, which it called “highly symbolic” of the broader themes Facebook regularly grapples with; this includes whether certain posts related to Covid should stay on the net and hate speech issues in Myanmar. .
A spokesperson for the Supervisory Board declined to comment.
Facebook has a spotty track record of electoral issues, right down to Russia manipulating the platform’s ads and posts in the 2016 presidential election.
Lawmakers and political ad buyers have also criticized Facebook for changing the rules on political ads ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The company said it would do so last year. prohibit the purchase of new political ads a week before the election, then temporarily decided ban all US political ads Following the closing of the polls on Election Day, it created outrage among candidates and companies that bought ads.
The company struggled over how to deal with election lies and hate speech. In his final year in office, Mr. Trump used Facebook to suggest he would use state violence against protesters in Minneapolis ahead of the 2020 election, casting doubt on the electoral process when the votes rolled in November. Facebook initially said that what political leaders post is newsworthy and should not be touched. then before reversing course.
The social network also faced difficulties in elections elsewhere. spread of targeted disinformation Across the WhatsApp messaging service during the Brazilian presidential election in 2018. Facebook in 2019 hundreds of misleading pages and accounts have been removed affiliated with political parties in india before the general elections in the country.
Facebook has tried various methods to block criticism. a wolf political ads library increase transparency among recipients of these promotions. Also established war rooms Monitoring elections for disinformation to prevent interference.
There are several elections next year in countries like Hungary, Germany, Brazil, and the Philippines, where Facebook’s actions will be closely scrutinized. Voter fraud misinformation It has already started to spread before the German elections in September. Philippines, Facebook lifted Fake account networks supporting President Rodrigo Duterte, who used the social network to gain power in 2016.
“There is already a perception that Facebook, an American social media company, has entered and overturned elections in other countries through its platform,” said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford University. “The decisions Facebook makes have global implications.”
Three people with knowledge of the matter said internal conversations around an election commission date back at least a few months.
The public said an election commission would be significantly different from an Oversight Board. While the Oversight Board waits for Facebook to remove a post or account and then review that action, they said the election commission would proactively provide guidance without the company making a previous call.
Tatenda Musapatike, who previously worked on elections at Facebook and now runs a nonprofit voter registration organization, said many have lost faith in the company’s abilities to work with political campaigns. But he said the electoral commission proposal was a “good step” because “they are doing something and not saying we can handle it alone.”
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