Meta is recommending five approaches to support Thailand's upcoming general election, in a bid to combat misinformation and information-influence operations (IO), as well as interference from other countries.
Political parties campaign for the upcoming 2023 elections after receiving official party numbers and registering party-list members on Tuesday. (Photo: Wichan Charoenkiatpakul)
From 2016-21, Meta invested US$16 billion on measures to ward off foreign interference and domestic information operations, reduce misinformation and combat voter suppression.
In Thailand, Facebook has 65 million accounts.
"Elections around the world have changed. Meta is offering its experience to Thailand for its upcoming election, giving people a voice to combat hate speech," said Clare Amador, head of public policy for Thailand and the Philippines.
The social media giant is working to protect election integrity and empower voters across the world on its platforms, she said. Meta employs more than 40,000 people dedicated to safety and security, while investing $5 billion in 2021 alone to fight against foreign interference and domestic IO, reduce misinformation and combat voter suppression.
The company has five prongs to its Thai election integrity campaign, including its formation of a dedicated election operations team of subject matter experts from a wide range of disciplines, including election integrity, misinformation, safety, human rights and cyber, to monitor and respond to emerging risks in real time.
Moreover, it will also address harmful content and networks by removing content that violates community standards like hate speech, violence and incitement, bullying and harassment, misinformation that leads to physical harm, and manipulation of fake videos and deep fakes.
Meta's misinformation policies do not allow content that could interfere with or suppress voting, including misrepresentation of the dates, locations, times and methods for voting or voter registration. It also does not allow content that calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, or calls for coordinated interference in elections.
Meta also uses detection technology to block attempts to create fake accounts. In the fourth quarter 2022, 1.3 billion fake accounts were removed from its platforms.
Khwan Rueankham, government social impact partner manager of Facebook Thailand, added that as part of the five approaches, Meta also increases political advertising and page transparency. In term of ad transparency, advertisers are now required to go through an authorisation process using government-issued photo ID and place "Paid for by" disclaimers on their ads.
By having ad authorisation that allows only people who live in that location to purchase ads, this reduces foreign interference by other countries.
In addition, Meta also has dedicated a cybersecurity team to monitor for and respond to adversarial behaviour, in particular "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" (CIB). For elections, CIB is mainly used to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal, using fake accounts to mislead others.
The last approach sees Meta partnering with local election authorities and encouraging civic participation. Meta has built a network and runs several initiatives in Thailand with partners such as the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) and local civil society organisations in the lead up to the election.
