Meta’s third annual transparency report on Australia’s disinformation and misinformation industry code

Josh Machin, Head of Public Policy, Meta Australia

Today, Meta released its third annual transparency report under the Australian industry code on disinformation and misinformation.

Meta is proud to be a founding member and signatory to the Australian industry code on disinformation and misinformation. In its third year, the code has provided a transparent framework for signatories to share their efforts on how they continue to combat misinformation and disinformation on their services in Australia.

In our latest report, we outline the 45 commitments Meta has met under the code in 2022, and share dedicated data points on the impacts of our misinformation efforts in Australia. Between 1 January and 31 December 2022:

• We took action on over 91,000 pieces of content across Facebook & Instagram in Australia for violating our Harmful Health Misinformation policies.
• We displayed warnings on over 9 million distinct pieces of content on Facebook in Australia (including reshares) based on articles written by our third party fact checking partners.
• We removed over 100 accounts, pages, and groups in Australia for repeatedly violating our Harmful Health Misinformation policies.
• There were over 1.8 billion visits to the COVID-19 Information Centre. Over 7.5 million of these visits were from users in Australia.
• There were over 84 million visits to the Climate Science Information Centre. Over 25,000 of these visits were from users in Australia.

In 2022, some highlights of our work include:

• Implementing a suite of measures in the lead up to the 2022 Australian federal election to proactively detect and remove content that breaches our policies, combat misinformation, harmful content and coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and promote civic participation.
  
  As a result of these efforts, during the election campaign (between April 1 and June 30, 2022):
  ◦ We took action on over 25,000 pieces of content across Facebook & Instagram for violating our Harmful Health Misinformation policies.
  ◦ We displayed warnings on over 3 million distinct pieces of content on Facebook (including reshares) based on articles written by our third-party fact-checking partners.
  ◦ We took action on over 91,000 pieces of content on Facebook and over 40,000 pieces of content on Instagram in Australia for violating our hate speech policies.
  ◦ We took action on over 200,000 pieces of content on Facebook and over 46,000 of content on Instagram in Australia for violating our Community Standards on violence and incitement.
  ◦ We rejected around 17,000 ads for not complying with our political and social issue ads enforcement policies.
  
  We also released two election prompts on Facebook, and election stickers on Instagram to encourage people to vote and direct users to the AEC website. These were seen by over 23 million people across Australia.
• Expanding transparency around ads and content ranking. We’ve introduced new information on targeting selections in our Ad Library, and enhanced the “Why Am I Seeing This Ad?’ tool. We have also introduced AI System Cards for Instagram to provide transparency around content ranking.
• Sponsoring events in relation to misinformation and disinformation, including the Australian Media Literacy Alliance’s inaugural Media Literacy Summit, and the 2023 Sydney Dialogue.
• Investing in new research on media literacy of First Nations peoples by Professor Tristan Kennedy from Monash University, and on misinformation from the Queensland University of Technology by Michelle Riedlinger and Silvia Montaña-Niño, and Marina Joubert (Stellenbosch University), Víctor García-Perdomo (Universidad de La Sabana) on ‘Countering misinformation in the Southern Hemisphere: A comparative study’.

We look forward to continuing to work with Australian policymakers, civil society, academics and experts on how we can evolve our work moving forward.

Read Meta’s response to the Australian disinformation and misinformation industry code in further detail here.