Elections 2022

The Election Commission Nepal (ECN) has started red-flagging online contents , including posts, groups, pages and personal IDs, that violate the election code. However, the commission appears to be at a loss over its efficacy.

The poll body has been working closely with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, since the local elections in May this year. It is also taking help from TikTok, another social media platform that has a huge user base in Nepal. 

ECN says it is “absolutely necessary” to pull this digital effort to protect election integrity as posts on social media have a huge reach and spread more quickly. 

Misinformation, hate speech, fake news and political advertisement were allegedly spread on social media to swing votes in the US presidential elections of 2016 and the Brexit voting in 2020.

Following that, Google, Facebook, and Twitter vowed to take strong measures against any election meddling worldwide after the election.

Under its 'Election Integrity at Meta' programme, Meta has joined forces with the ECN for the November 20 elections. In October, Meta representatives visited Nepal to train ECN officials and educate others concerned, including journalists.

For the first time, the commission has included a provision under its Election Code of Conduct to curb misinformation and foreign interference via social media. 

The ECN said it had employed a few people to tackle the misinformation and red-flag the contents across Meta’s platforms and TikTok that violate the election code.

However, the poll body has yet to figure out what happens to the reported and red-flagged posts, profiles, pages and groups.

“We just report and request Meta and Tik Tok to take down the contents. Beyond that we have no control over those contents,” ECN spokesperson Shaligram Sharma Poudel told NepalMinute.com. 

But Facebook, Tik Tok and other social media giants lie beyond Nepal’s jurisdiction, Poudel said, “we cannot enforce Nepali rules”.

“Social media companies don’t have offices in Nepal and nor do the government agencies have established ties with these companies. That makes it difficult in enforcing these rules,” added Poudel.

Meta’s take

Meta has its own take on election integrity, as it mentions them on its election integrity page.
Three principles – Remove, Reduce and Inform – that Meta uses to curb misinformation and hate speech that experts claim can influence and swing votes.

But the ECN conceded that it had no idea how effective it would be in Nepal’s context. 

Meta uses artificial intelligence (AI) and trained in-house and third-party reviewers to scour content across social media platforms and instantly remove content that violates the community standard including fake accounts or misinformation that may “contribute to the risk of imminent violence or harm”. 

But it reduces the spread of the content flagged by the third-party reviewers and in most of the context, it tries to add context to the misinformation, which is a half-truth. 

Meta writes in the voter interference section that it removes content that misrepresents who can vote, methods for voting (e.g. "Vote by text!") or when or where people can vote, such as ads that advise people not to vote.

But it writes: “We do leave up some posts that go against our Community Standards, a few times a year, if the public interest outweighs the risk of harm.”

ECN officials said they are “working tirelessly” with multiple social media to maintain the election code of conduct. 

Poudel added: “We are still trying to establish a communication channel with additional social media sites like Twitter.”