Facebook is preparing for the elections in Germany!

2021 is the “super election year”: six federal states will elect their state parliaments and the federal election will take place in September. Facebook itself is convinced that they can make a positive contribution to the security and transparency of elections.

Facebook wrote the following about the 2021 elections in Germany: We are convinced that Facebook can make a positive contribution to the security and transparency of the elections. Every election is different - that's why we have teams that focus specifically on the elections in Germany. Below we would like to introduce how we prepare:

1. Removing prohibited content 

• The safety of people on our platforms is our top priority.
• We have global community standards that are publicly viewable and define what is and isn't allowed on Facebook and Instagram. If content is shared that violates our rules, we will remove it.
• This includes misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm or misinformation about the electoral process that could discourage people from voting.
• Since 2016, we have tripled the team working on security issues at Facebook to more than 35,000 employees worldwide. Around 15,000 people are responsible for reviewing content.
• We also rely on artificial intelligence to detect and remove unauthorized content more quickly.
• From January to March 2021, we removed 25.2 million pieces of content from Facebook globally for violating our hate speech policies. We removed almost 97 percent of the content before users could report it - in 2017 this rate was 24 percent.

2. Combat misinformation

• We reduce the spread of fake news when it is determined to be false by our third-party, independent fact-checkers. We work with over 80 independent fact-checking organizations worldwide, verifying content in more than 60 languages. In Germany our partners are AFP , Correctiv and dpa .
• As soon as our fact checkers classify content as false, we not only reduce the distribution of the content, but also add links to further articles or warnings:
  • We send notifications to users who have shared the content.
  • If people try to share incorrect content, they will receive a warning message. Content that has already been shared will also be marked with a warning.
  • Our experience shows that 95 percent of the time, people who see this warning do not click on the original content.
• We do not believe it is our job to decide whether statements made by politicians are true or false or to prevent them from reaching the public. That's why our independent fact-checkers do not check content that comes from politicians.
• However, when politicians share content that has previously been classified as false or partially false, they receive less distribution in Facebook's News Feed.

3. Curb viral misinformation

• We're working hard to prevent misinformation from going viral and have restricted message forwarding on WhatsApp and Messenger.
• The number of people a message can be forwarded to at the same time is limited to five.
• In addition, content that has been shared frequently is marked “Forwarded” or “Frequently forwarded”. Messages marked “Frequently forwarded” can only be sent to a chat.

4. Transparency in political ads

• We are convinced that political discussions must be conducted transparently so that voters can get a complete picture. This also applies to advertising on politically or socially relevant topics on Facebook or Instagram.
• Any person wishing to place political advertising in Germany must go through an authorization process to verify their identity and residence in Germany.
• Advertisers who want to place election advertising or advertising on politically or socially relevant topics in Germany must mark their advertisements with the “Financed by” disclaimer.
• All advertisements on politically or socially relevant topics can be found in our advertising library . Here you can publicly see which advertisements are currently running, which groups of people have seen them and how much was spent on them. This archive is equipped with comprehensive search functions and stores political advertisements for seven years.
• In addition, all users can click on an ad on Facebook and use the “Why am I seeing this ad?” function. Get more information about the target groups of the respective advertising and block ads from certain advertisers.
• You can also set your advertising preferences on Facebook and Instagram if you want to see less political advertising displayed in the news feed.

5. Prevent election interference

• The fight against election interference is a high priority for us. Over the past three and a half years, we have regularly published information about our response to coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) campaigns. We show current progress in our monthly report .
• We have built specialized teams around the world to stop coordinated disinformation campaigns. These are characterized by actors attempting to manipulate political discourse and influence public debate by using pages, groups and individual accounts for targeted disinformation campaigns.
• We take action against these networks based on their deceptive behavior, not necessarily the content they share. These may or may not be permitted.
• Since 2017, we have shut down more than 100 of these networks worldwide, particularly in the run-up to elections.
• Every day we block millions of fake accounts before they are reported to us.

6. Protection and support for candidates

• We offer politicians a range of helpful tools to enable safe and responsible exchanges with voters. Thanks to measures such as two-step authentication, the Facebook security or privacy check, candidates' accounts are better protected against unauthorized access and identity fraud. We also support third-party security and authentication methods such as Google Authenticator or LastPass.
• In order to reduce or prevent inappropriate comments, we provide various content moderation tools. With them you can e.g. B. offensive comments can be filtered out or comments with certain words (keywords) can be blocked. Page administrators can also remove or block people.
• To inform candidates and their campaign teams about the available tools and relevant topics related to political communication, we offer regular product training and webinars.
• We place a particular focus on supporting female candidates, who are often exposed to harsher tones online than their male colleagues. In regular online events, together with our partners from the areas of counter-speech and resilience, we provide information about measures, functions and tactics for effective moderation. This includes tips for maintaining constructive debates and dealing with stressful comments. We also offer an additional reporting channel and, if necessary, individual advice.

Further Facebook links:

• Advertising Library
• Community standards
• Community Standards Enforcement Report
• Transparency Center
• Overview of measures against misinformation

Source: Facebook / Download factsheet
Article image: Shutterstock / By zkolra