Ahead Of Elections In Australia, Facebook Reminds Users To Prevent Disinformation

Facebook launched a video asking its users to be more careful and more critical. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Ahead of the general election (election) in Australia, Facebook launched a video asking its users to be careful and more critical of misinformation or disinformation on its social media.

Facebook and newswire service Associated Press Australia (AAP) will publish videos on its social media and Instagram encouraging users to improve their media literacy and be more critical of the information presented to them.

Streamed to users in Australia, the video will last until November 24. The AAP will also provide materials on how to identify misinformation.

This is an extension of the fact-checking service that AAP provides to Facebook. Australian elections will be held in May 2022. Meanwhile, Facebook's head of public policy in Australia, Josh Machin said the company plans to deploy various measures to combat misinformation.

"When we think about election integrity measures, fighting misinformation is a very important part of that," Machin said as quoted by The Guardian, Monday, October 25.

“But we are also thinking about other areas such as fighting disinformation and coordinating inauthentic behaviour, and helping to ensure cyber security around elections, promoting civic participation, the importance of democracy. You'll see a wide range of action in all those areas once we know when the election date is."

However, Reset Australia director of technology policy Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran explained that the video places the onus on individual users to address misinformation online, rather than addressing the systemic problem of social media's own algorithmic amplification of misinformation.

“Simply put, social media companies promote, amplify and profit from sensational and extreme content. Algorithms are designed to amplify the content that elicits the strongest reaction from us because that is what keeps us glued to our phones and browsing the platform so that more value can be extracted from us," said Sooriyakumaran.

Citing Mirage News, the appearance of the fact-check video comes as Facebook has been hit by a series of revelations by whistle-blower Frances Haugen, who said the company put profit before safety. And asked not to trust Facebook anymore.

Haugen told US lawmakers last week that Facebook should be forced to publish a daily list of trending links, which would allow authorities to quickly remove misinformation on the platform.