"Facebook may harm the purity of the elections"

Among the findings: on Facebook in Israel, it is claimed, a large number of fake and anonymous profiles operate in complete violation of community rules, some of them engage in criminal activity without interruption

Yanon ben Shoshan

13/09/2022

Tuesday, September 13, 2022, 11:59 a.m. Updated: 1:12 p.m.

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Election ballots in Jerusalem, March 23, 2021 (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

The place of social networks in the elections for the Prime Minister becomes even more significant: today (Tuesday) the heads of the Israeli Internet Association addressed an urgent letter to executives at Meta (Facebook) in Europe and the United States in order to warn them of the lack of appropriate preparation of the popular social networks for the elections in Israel.

As part of the letter, the president Dr. Sharon Bar-Ziv and the union's CEO and attorney Yoram HaCohen list a number of potential failures and threats to the integrity of the elections, which could arise from Meta's poor preparation for the elections in Israel and warn against the danger of harming the integrity of the elections and the public interest of the voters This, in light of the risk of spreading false and misleading information by anonymous interested parties through Meta's social networks - including Instagram and WhatsApp.

A special investigation conducted by the Fake Reporter organization in collaboration with the Israel Internet Association revealed that a large number of fake and anonymous profiles are operating on Facebook in Israel in complete violation of the community's rules and that some of them also engage in criminal activity without interruption.

Many of these accounts are relatively easily detectable but have not been arrested.

The letter warns that according to studies and reports that researchers and network experts recently published in the world, it seems that users of more marginal non-Western languages ​​- such as the Hebrew language - receive a poor response from the automatic identification and moderation systems of Facebook and Instagram and are not treated in a timely manner.

The risk: the spread of false and misleading information by anonymous interested parties through Meta's social networks (Photo: GettyImages)

Even the reporting mechanisms that allow users to report problematic accounts and pages do not provide an adequate response to the phenomena of offensiveness and hostile interference in the public discourse in Israel, which are becoming especially important and urgent these days in preparation for the elections.

The heads of the Israel Internet Association, it was reported, warned Meta that it does not appear that special and appropriate measures were taken in Israel to deal with the limitations of enforcement in the Hebrew language and that no dedicated preparation was made to ensure the purity of the elections, as Meta did and is doing in other countries.

The Israeli Internet Association points out in its letter that over the past two years the Meta company has committed to a unique activity in order to ensure the integrity of election procedures in many countries, such as: in the USA (the mid-term elections for the legislature), in Brazil (the presidential elections) and in other countries such as the Philippines and earlier this year as well for elections in Kenya and India.

According to the company's publications in all these countries, it has taken special measures to prevent the spread of hate speech and incitement, to stop foreign interference and damage to the integrity of the elections, and to prevent the spread of false and misleading information through collaborations with professional fact-checkers and civil society organizations.

Ahead of the upcoming elections in Brazil, Meta published a special report in which it claimed to have invested significant budgets in new artificial intelligence technologies and in expanding dedicated personnel in order to identify and prevent the spread of false information and incitement through fake or impersonating profiles and in establishing a special task force to handle the elections.

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"We call on you to open an immediate dialogue with the relevant state authorities and civil society bodies, in order to formulate an effective and immediate response that will ensure that users in Israel will have a safe online space," union president Bar-Ziv and CEO Cohen wrote in their letter to the heads of Meta and Facebook. "This need becomes even more urgent and critical with the opening of the campaigns for the Knesset elections and the need to ensure effective enforcement of the relevant community rules to prevent fake accounts or inflammatory content."

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