How Meta is preparing for the Australian federal election

By Cheryl Seeto, Head of Public Policy, Meta Australia

Takeaways:

• We have developed a comprehensive approach to help ensure the integrity of elections on our platforms: one that gives people a voice, supports participation in the civic process, and combats voter interference and foreign influence.
• We continue to work with Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Australian Associated Press (AAP) to independently review content. We are also partnering with AAP on a new media literacy campaign to help Australians critically assess the content they view online, which will run in the lead-up to the election.
• We remove the most serious kinds of misinformation from Facebook, Instagram and Threads, such as content that could contribute to imminent violence or physical harm, or that attempts to interfere with voting.
• We have also taken steps to further mitigate risks associated with AI-generated content, such as deepfakes and AI-powered disinformation campaigns.

Soon millions of Australians will head to the polls for the Australian federal election. Over many years, Meta has developed a comprehensive approach for elections on our platforms.

While much of our approach has remained consistent for some time, we’ve continually adapted based on our learnings from hundreds of global elections to ensure the integrity of elections on our platforms: one that gives people a voice, helps support participation in the civic process, and combats voter interference and foreign influence.

This approach is consistent with how we have sought to prevent abuse of our platforms during recent major elections in India, the UK and the US. While we are conscious that every election brings its own challenges and complexities, our comprehensive approach puts us in a good position to protect the integrity of the Australian federal election on our platforms.

Combatting misinformation and connecting people with reliable information

We will continue to work with AFP and the AAP to independently review content through Meta Australia’s third party fact-checking program. When content is debunked by these fact-checkers, we attach warning labels to the content and reduce its distribution in Feed and Explore so it is less likely to be seen.

We are also partnering with AAP on a new media literacy campaign to help Australians critically assess the content they view online, which will run in the lead-up to the election.

For all other content, our Community Standards are in place for the most serious kinds of violations, including misinformation on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. This includes content that could contribute to imminent violence or physical harm, or that attempts to interfere with voting. If we find content that violates these policies it will be removed.

Working with the Australian Electoral Commission

We’ll also continue working with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on a number of fronts. This includes activating our voter empowerment products, which will remind Australians to vote at the election and connect them with verified information from the AEC across Facebook and Instagram about where and when they can vote. The voting information prompts will start to roll-out a week before the election, and we will share an election day reminder on Facebook and Instagram on the day itself. For those that want to share their civic experience, Instagram voting stickers will be available for people to post to their Stories.

Countering the risks related to the abuse of GenAI technologies

Our Community Standards and Ad Standards apply to all content, including AI-generated content, and we take action against this type of content when it violates these policies. AI-generated content is also eligible to be reviewed and rated by our independent fact-checking partners. One of the rating options is Altered, which includes, “Faked, manipulated or transformed audio, video, or photos.” When it is rated as such, we label it and down-rank it in feed so fewer people see it.

For content that doesn’t violate our policies, we still believe it’s important for people to know when photorealistic content they’re seeing has been created using AI. We label photorealistic images in ads created using Meta AI, and label organic AI generated images that users post to Facebook, Instagram and Threads from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney, and Shutterstock as they implement their plans for adding metadata to images created by their tools.

We have also added a feature for people to disclose when they share AI-generated images, video or audio so we can add a label to the content. However, if a user chooses not to identify their use of AI in the content shared and we detect signals of AI, we will apply an AI info label. In certain cases we may determine that a digitally created or altered image, video or audio that creates a high risk of deceiving the public on a matter of importance, we may add a more prominent label, so people have more information and context.

Since AI-generated content appears across the internet, we’ve also been working with other companies in our industry on common standards and guidelines. We’re a member of the Partnership on AI and we signed on to the tech accord designed to combat the spread of deceptive AI content in the 2024 elections. This work is bigger than any one company and requires coordinated effort across industry, government and civil society.

Providing industry-leading transparency for ads

Since 2018, we have provided industry-leading transparency for ads about social issues, elections or politics (SIEP). Advertisers who run these ads are required to complete an authorisation process and include a “paid for by” disclaimer. These ads are then stored in our publicly available Ad Library for seven years.

Last year we announced advertisers will also have to disclose when they use AI or other digital techniques to create or alter a political or social issue ad in certain cases. This applies if the ad contains a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered to depict a real person as saying or doing something they did not say or do. It also applies if an ad depicts a realistic-looking person that does not exist or a realistic-looking event that did not happen, alters footage of a real event, or depicts a realistic event that allegedly occurred, but that is not a true image, video, or audio recording of the event.

Preventing Election and Voter Interference

To counter covert influence operations, we’ve built specialised global teams to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour and have investigated and taken down over 200 of these adversarial networks since 2017, something we’ve shared as part of our Quarterly Threat Reports. This is a highly adversarial space where deceptive campaigns we take down continue to try to come back and evade detection by us and other platforms, which is why we continuously take action as we find further violating activity.

For more overt efforts, we label state-controlled media on Facebook, Instagram and Threads so that users know when content is from a publication that may be wholly or partially under the editorial control of a government.

In addition to preventing foreign interference, we continually review and update our election-related policies, and take action if content violates our Community Standards, including our policies on election and voter interference, hateful conduct, coordinating harm and publicising crime, and bullying and harassment. We remove this content whether it was created by a person or AI.

For more information about how Meta approaches elections, visit our Preparing for Elections page.