How Meta is working to promote elections integrity during the Kenya 2022 Elections

Meta has today outlined some of the work it’s been undertaking to promote election integrity for the Kenya 2022 elections on 9th August 2022. The work is inspired by Meta’s experience so far in supporting over 200 elections globally, including key elections across Sub Saharan Africa. Meta’s dedicated teams have also been working closely with elections authorities and trusted partners in countries facing elections to customise its strategies and take appropriate steps to stay ahead of emerging threats and make sure it is prepared long before people cast their votes.

Commenting on the efforts around election integrity in Kenya, Meta Public Policy Director for East Africa and Horn of Africa Mercy Ndegwa said, “We know we have an important responsibility when it comes to helping people participate in elections and to ensure safe, secure, and free elections. Using lessons from the past and input from experts and policymakers across the political spectrum, we’ve made substantial investments in people and technology to reduce misinformation, remove harmful content on our platforms, fight voter interference and promote civic engagement during the elections.“

Some of our interventions with the Kenya 2022 elections include;-

Creation of a cross-functional team spread across the world that is dedicated to the Kenya elections, which includes Kenyans and people who have spent significant amounts of time in the country, as we recognise that local understanding is critical. The team also includes individuals with global expertise in topics like misinformation, hate speech, elections and disinformation. These teams are working hard to prevent any abuse of our services before, during and after Kenya’s 2022 general election. Locally, we also have permanent staff who reside in Kenya and work in the public policy, public policy programmes, communications and product teams.

Prioritising the safety of people on our service especially during elections through the guidance of our Community Standards that define what is and isn’t allowed on our service in order to keep people safe, while also protecting free expression.  We have made massive investments in safety and security with more than 40,000 people working on these issues – and spent approximately $5 billion on safety and security in 2021 alone. 

Decreasing the risk of problematic content going viral in Kenya and potentially inciting violence or hatred ahead of or during the election by temporarily reducing the distribution of content from individuals who have repeatedly or severely violated our policies so fewer people see it. In 2019 we reduced the number of people you can forward a message on Whatsapp to just five chats at once and introduced the ‘forwarded’ and ‘highly forwarded’ labels to highlight when something has been shared multiple times. We’ve since further reduced the number of people you can send a highly forwarded message to, to just one chat at once, which has resulted in a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages on WhatsApp.

Taking aggressive steps to fight the spread of misinformation on our services in Kenya, by removing misinformation which could lead to imminent violence or physical harm and working with our fact-checking partners in Kenya (AFP, Africa Check and  PesaCheck) – to review and rate potentially false content on our platforms, label it, and place it lower in our feed, so fewer people see it. We are careful, however, not to limit political speech since we have a fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that political speech is the most scrutinised speech there is. 

Making political ads more transparent with anybody seeking to run political ads in Kenya is now required to undergo a verification process to prove who they are and that they live in Kenya. These ads are labelled with a disclaimer, so you can see who paid for them and stored them in our public Ads Library for seven years so that everyone can see what ads are running, what types of people saw them and how much was spent. We also offer controls so that people in Kenya can choose not to see any of these political ads which run with a disclaimer. 

Fighting voter interference through our specialised teams that are working to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour where sophisticated networks of Pages, Groups and accounts are used to try and manipulate public debate. Since 2017, we have removed over 150 networks around the world for coordinated inauthentic behaviour including ahead of major elections around the world. We have tripled the number of people who work on security and safety issues overall to more than 40,000, including security experts, AI and machine learning engineers, and content reviewers.

Promoting civic engagement as part of Kenya 2022 elections integrity work as we want Kenyans to have accurate information about how and when to vote through our platforms. We will have an “I Voted” sticker on Instagram in Kenya and on the day of the election, through our elections day reminder, remind Kenyans that it’s time to vote with a notification on top of their Facebook News Feed.

Supporting digital literacy in Kenya through partnerships in programs such as “My Digital World” to improve digital and media literacy and raise awareness amongst the youth, teachers, parents, guardians on topics such as online safety, privacy, digital citizenship, news and media literacy delivered through live instructor-led and in-person/hybrid sessions. Through a partnership with iEARN Kenya, we’re supporting teachers and parents by providing training sessions with the aim of equipping them with the knowledge, skills and competencies necessary to guide their learners on how to navigate the digital world responsibly and safely. As part of our elections integrity work, we shall educate the public on how to identify and not share hate speech and misinformation on our platforms through online ads on Facebook and by running radio ads on national and vernacular radio stations.