Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made securing the 2020 US presidential election a top priority. He regularly met with an election team of more than 300 people from across the company to prevent false information from spreading to social networks. He sought advice from civil rights leaders on upholding voters’ rights.
Facebook’s core election team, renamed Meta last year, has since disbanded. Currently, about 60 people are mostly focused on elections, while others are spending time on other projects. They meet another executive, not Mr. Zuckerberg. And even if you ask him to pay more attention to the November midterm elections, the CEO hasn’t talked to civil rights groups lately.
Election protection is no longer of Zuckerberg’s primary concern, four meta-employees who know the situation said. Instead, he focuses on turning his company into an immersive world provider of Metaverse. It sees him as the next frontier of growth, said those who are not allowed to speak publicly.
The shift in focus at Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, can have widespread consequences as confidence in the US electoral system reaches a weak point. A hearing on the January 6 parliamentary riots emphasized how volatile elections are. And dozens of in November this year, based on the false assumption that social media platforms continue to be an important way to reach American voters and that former President Donald J. Trump was robbed of the 2020 elections. There are people running for political candidates.
Election misinformation continues to be rampant online. According to an analysis by the New York Times, the movie “2000 Mule,” which falsely claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Mr. Trump, was widely shared on Facebook and Instagram this month, with more than 430,000 interactions. In a post about the movie, commenters said they expected this year’s election fraud and warned against mail voting and the use of electronic voting machines.
Other social media companies have also withdrawn some of their focus on elections. Twitter, which stopped labeling and removing false alarms in March 2021, is obsessed with selling $ 44 billion to Elon Musk, according to three employees who know the situation. Musk suggested that less rules were needed for what could and couldn’t be posted to the service.
“Companies need to step up their efforts to prepare to protect election integrity over the next few years without pulling back,” said Anchor Change, CEO of consulting firm Anchor Change, who previously managed election policy at Meta. Katie Harbath, who is in charge, said. “Many problems remain, including candidates claiming that the 2020 elections are fraudulent, and we don’t know how they treat them.”
Meta has been working with Twitter for many years to keep Mr. Trump out of the platform and limit political falsehoods on the site after the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol. Meta spokesman Tom Reynolds said the company “how elections will take place on our platform before the 2020 US elections, and through dozens of global elections since then. We are taking a comprehensive approach to. “
According to Reynolds, Meta has hundreds of people across more than 40 teams focused on election campaigns. At each election, the company “builds teams and technology, withdraws fraudulent campaigns, limits the spread of false information, and develops partnerships to maintain industry-leading transparency in political advertising and pages. Was. “
Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy said the company “continues its efforts to protect the integrity of election conversations and inform the public about our approach.” In the medium term, Twitter labeled the political candidate’s account and provided an information box on how to vote in local elections.
How Meta and Twitter handle elections has implications outside the United States, given the global nature of the platform. In Brazil, which will hold a general election in October, President Jair Bolsonaro has recently questioned the country’s election process. Latvia, Bosnia and Slovenia also hold elections in October.
January 6 House Committee Hearing Theme
Sahar Massachi, Executive Director of the Think Tank Integrity Institute and a former Facebook employee, said: “And no matter how bad it is here, think about how bad it is everywhere else.”
Facebook’s role, which can distort elections, has been revealed since 2016, when Russian agents used the site to spread incendiary content and split U.S. voters in the U.S. presidential election. I did. In 2018, Zuckerberg testified before Congress that election security was his number one priority.
“The most important thing I care about right now is to ensure that no one interferes with the various 2018 elections around the world,” he said.
Social networks have since been efficient in eliminating foreign efforts to disseminate disinformation in the United States, according to election experts. But Facebook and Instagram still suffer from conspiracy theories and other political lies on their site, they said.
In November 2019, Zuckerberg promised to host a dinner for civil rights leaders at home, hold conference calls and zoom conference calls with them, and focus on election integrity as the main focus. did.
He also met regularly with the election team. Over 300 employees on various product and engineering teams have been asked to build a new system to detect and remove incorrect information. Facebook has also been active in eliminating toxic content, banning QAnon conspiracy theory postings and groups in October 2020.
Around the same time, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent $ 400 million to fund voting station workers, pay voting station rents, provide personal protective equipment, and other administrative costs. Donated to the local government.
In the week before the November 2020 elections, Meta also frozen all political advertising to limit the spread of falsehoods.
However, despite its success, the company kept foreign elections away from the platform, but struggled to handle Mr. Trump, who used his Facebook account to amplify false allegations of fraudulent voting. After the January 6 riots, Facebook banned Mr. Trump from posting. He is eligible to return to work in January 2023.
Frances Haugen, who turned from a Facebook employee to a whistleblower last year, filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission for removing election security features shortly after the 2020 elections. She said Facebook prioritized growth and engagement over security.
In October, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would focus on the Metaverse. The company has been reorganized and spent more resources developing the online world.
Meta has also remodeled the election team. According to employees, the number of employees currently dedicated solely to elections has dropped from more than 300 in 2020 to about 60. Hundreds of others attended election conferences, A cross-functional team that works on other issues. The department that builds virtual reality software, a key component of the Metaverse, has expanded.
Mr Zuckerberg no longer meets weekly with people focused on election security, he has received their reports, but four employees said. Instead, they meet Nick Clegg, President of Meta’s Global Affairs.
Some civil rights groups said they noticed a change in Meta’s priorities. They said Zuckerberg wasn’t involved in discussions with them like he used to, and no other top meta executives were involved.
“I’m worried,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who spoke with Zuckerberg and Meta’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg prior to the 2020 elections. “It’s invisible, it looks like it’s out of the mind.” (Sandberg announced that he’ll be leaving Meta this fall.)
Rashad Robinson, president of another civil rights organization, Color of Change, said Sandberg and Zuckerberg sought recommendations from his organization in 2020 to prevent false alarms in the elections. Their proposal was largely ignored, he said, and he hadn’t been in contact with either executive for over a year. He is currently interacting with Roy Austin, Meta’s Vice President for Civil Rights.
Meta added that Austin is the only major social media company to meet with civil rights leaders quarterly and have civil rights executives.
In May, 130 civil rights organizations, progressive think tanks, and public interest organizations I wrote a letter Zuckerberg and CEO of YouTube, Twitter, Snap and other platforms. They withdrew a post about the lie that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election and called for delaying the dissemination of false information in the election by the mid-term.
Yosef Getachew, director of Common Cause, a non-profit public advocate who investigated false alarms in the 2020 elections on social media, said the two companies did not respond.
“Big lie is central in the medium term and is used by many candidates to preemptively declare that the 2022 election will be stolen,” he said. Michigan When Arizona Those who mistakenly said that dead people would vote for the Democratic Party. “Now is the time to stop coercing big lie.”
