Meta unveils ad transparency policy to prevent external interference in Thai election

The move comes as Thailand prepares to hold a general election on May 14.

Khwan Rueangkham, Meta’s government and social impact partner manager, said at a media briefing on Tuesday that the company strongly believed in people's right to adequate information so that they could make informed decisions about which political parties to vote for.

However, for people to vote freely, Meta has added some rules for advertisers who want to advertise on electoral, political, and social issues, she said.

Stringent verification
She explained that advertisers must now go through an authorisation process using government-issued photo ID and include "Paid for by" disclaimers on their ads so that the people in Thailand could see who was funding the ads and attempting to influence them.

She said the purpose of this verification process was to ensure that there was no interference by any third party outside Thailand.

Thais can also search for all active ads across Facebook in the publicly accessible Ad Library to see when the ad was posted, which platforms it was posted on, and who was sponsoring the ad. An “About this Account” feature on Instagram provides additional context so people can evaluate authenticity.

Khwan assured that all political content on Meta's platform, including Facebook and Instagram, would be rigorously reviewed and monitored in order to prevent any misinformation and false leads that could lead to an unfair election.

In terms of spam content, she added that Meta had over 200 worldwide networks to check and monitor regularly in order to eliminate any risk or harmful content. Every quarter, the company updates and publishes publicly.

According to Meta, the verification process for political ads will take approximately three days before approval, which is longer than on a regular basis.

Clare Amador, Meta’s head of public policy for Thailand and the Philippines, said the advertising policy has only recently been implemented for Meta worldwide in September 2022. The adjustments are part of Meta's five-step approach to improving election integrity.

She pointed out that the five-step approach entails forming an election operations team, developing stronger policies to address harmful content and networks, combating misinformation, increasing transparency for political advertisements, and driving digital literacy and civic education programmes.

"We want to make it easy for Thai voters to participate in their political process. We are drawing on our global experiences and inputs from experts, as well as coordinating with local election bodies, to help preserve the integrity of elections around the world including here in Thailand. We want to mitigate election integrity risk on our apps," she said.

Expert oversight
Meta has a responsibility to protect election integrity while empowering people to vote all over the world, she added.

The company has an election operations team comprising subject matter experts who are deeply familiar with the local country context to help monitor and respond to emerging risks in real-time, including Thai nationals who speak the local language, she explained.

Meanwhile, to combat emerging threats related to elections and harmful content such as voter suppression misinformation, Meta employs artificial intelligence technology trained in the local language to detect and remove hate speech, bullying and harassment, and content that violates the violence and incitement policies outlined in its "Community Standards".

According to Meta, community standards is applied equally across the company’s global communities – alongside content moderators who can review content in Thai.

Focus on platform security
Amador revealed that Meta currently employs over 40,000 people worldwide to work on safety and security, while also investing approximately US$5 billion in 2021 alone on measures to better combat foreign interference and domestic influence operations, reduce misinformation, and combat voter suppression.

Since 2016, Meta has invested approximately $16 billion in improving its platform security.

Ing Sirikulbordee, Facebook Thailand's public policy manager, said that the company had given capacity-building training to several government organisations, election watchdogs, NGOs, and political candidates to inform them about its policies, services, tools, and ad transparency and reporting mechanisms, as well as training to the working team of the Election Commission of Thailand.

This includes enhancing digital literacy, which is essential for creating a more informed society and making people more aware of — and resistant to — misinformation online, particularly in the context of elections, she said.

Preventing misinformation
In addition, Meta has built a global network of more than 90 independent fact-checkers who review content in more than 60 languages, including Thai, to prevent misinformation from being shared on its platform.

"We are absolutely focused on playing our part and continuing our education and digital literacy initiatives to help Thais better understand our policies and use the power of technology for civic engagement,” Ing said.

She assured that Meta values user privacy as well.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, recently settled its lawsuit relating to British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica accessing data on tens of millions of American voters to build a “psychological warfare tool”, that reportedly helped the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016.

Meta agreed to pay US$725 million as settlement.

Meta is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in California. The company owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other products and services. It is one of the world's most valuable companies and among the 10 largest publicly traded corporations in the United States.