YouTube and Facebook letting disinformation spread during Brazil election: Report
A new report by the human rights organisation Global Witness claims that YouTube and Facebook have contributed to the spread of disinformation during the ongoing election campaign in Brazil.
According to the report, the social platforms have allowed misleading campaign ads to be posted as the race between President Jair Bolsonaro and challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva heats up. The ads included fake information, doctored images and misleading news about both the candidates.
“It’s frankly shocking that these massive firms with the technological prowess they clearly have, are unable to weed out such blatant disinformation being pushed onto their users,” said Jon Lloyd, Global Witness’s senior adviser, according to a report in The Guardian.
“If it wasn’t already obvious it should now be undeniable to even the biggest sceptic – social media firms are fundamentally failing in their responsibility to stop democratic processes being undermined by false, misleading and purposeful deceit,” he added.
The report identified 11 ads which ran on Facebook and more than 20 ads which ran on YouTube to fall under the “disinformation” category, and they were allowed to stay on the platform for 30 days.
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The accusations were refuted by Meta – the parent company of Facebook – and the spokesperson said that they have rejected 135,000 Brazil-related ad submissions till September 30.
“These reports were based on a very small sample of ads,” the official statement from the company stated according to The Guardian, “and are not representative given the number of political ads we review daily across the world.”