AUCKLAND (NZ Punjabi News Service): In view of October 17 New Zealand general election, social media gaint Facebook, is taking stringent steps to chech misinformation, which has been rife online lately.
With this purpose Facebook will be hiring fact checkers to monitor posts on the site, reduce the number of people you can forward a post to at once, and tweaking the advertising tools.
Talking to 1 News Facebook's director of policy for Australia and New Zealand Mia Garlick said,"We learn from each election, we've been actively engaged in working with New Zealand authorities in relation to New Zealand elections since the 2014 election.
He said measures that Facebook is taking now and the size of the team that's working on this is much bigger than in the 2014 New Zealand election.
Hiring fact checkers is one of those measures, Garlick says.
The team of certified fact checkers can detect content as it goes viral and then debunk it if it's not true.
Garlick says there are a "range of signals" they use to detect that content, including user reports or the comments being left on the post.
"Anyone who shared that post gets notified that it was false, and then we reduce the distribution of that content so fewer people see it so it can't have impact and interfere with public debate."
Only recently, Facebook was forced to remove a misleading video posted by Advance NZ, an aspiring political party.
It was pulled after a request from Speaker Trevor Mallard, who while as Speaker had previously ordered party leader Jami-Lee Ross to remove it. When he didn't, Facebook intervened directly.
Garlick says as well as making sure posts follow Facebook's guidelines, the social media giant wants to make sure they're consistent with New Zealand law.
"We will also [remove content] if we become aware of content on our services that does not respect New Zealand law, then we will take action to make sure it's no longer available in New Zealand out of respect for local law."
Part of that law is the blackout rule on election day.
Under the Electoral Act, no political adverts can be displayed between midnight and 7pm on October 17. That includes physical billboards, which need to be pulled down by the candidates, and digital adverts like on Facebook.
Garlick says they'll also be keeping an eye out for rulebreakers on social media and will worl closely with Election Commission to follow law.
Facebook has also rules around political adverts including tweaking the authorisation settings "for greater transparency.
All political ads approved by Facebook will now display who paid for that ad. In ad library anyone can go and look at all of the political ads that are running so that they can get a sense of what the political parties are trying to do with their ad campaigns.
That tool also shows how much each page is spending on political advertising on Facebook.
Facebook's other changes in New Zealand include limiting post forwarding to five people at a time and adding integrated adverts encouraging people to make sure they're enrolled to vote.
In 2018, a massive data leak revealed millions of users' data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, primarily for political advertising purposes, largely without their consent.
In India, Facebook is under fire from opposition political parties for compromising with its hate speech rules with social media giant allegedly showing leniency towards hate speeches by leaders of ruling right - wing Bharatiya Janata Party.