Tuesday (4/12), Association for Elections and Democracy or Perludem with the support of the Asia-Pacific Regional Support for Elections and Political Transitions (RESPECT) program, together with the Press Council of Timor Leste and Meta hold a workshop on “Combating Election Disinformation in Timor-Leste”. This activity was carried out for two days in an offline and online hybrid manner.
The objective of this workshop is to see what issues arise in disinformation on Facebook during the presidential election in Timor Leste, including what the Timor Leste government has done so far to fight hoaxes, and what are our next steps," said the Executive Director of Timor Leste Press Council, Rigoberto Monteiro, during the event.
On the first day's activities, there were eight resource persons who provided enrichment for Timor Leste journalists and students. Expedito Loro Diaz Ximenes, Acting Chairman of the Press Council of Timor Leste, and Zevonia Vieira, Chair of the Timor Lorosae Journalist Association or AJTL, for example, provide an overview of the situation of conventional media, the use of social media by politicians, and the spread of disinformation and malinformation during the 2022 Presidential Election in Timor Leste.
“From AJTL's observations, hate speech and malinformation have occurred before the election. It's a disease every five years. Politicians make political propaganda, use disinformation to gain support from voters," Zevonia said.
Not only that, Zevonia also conveyed the existence of political violence against female candidates, and the twisting of hate speech against politicians from the FRETILIN Party of Arab descent. Ironically, there are still many online media that do not adhere to the principles of inclusivity and peace journalism, thus reporting on conflicts that further exacerbate conflicts in society.
“The victims of malinformation are vulnerable and marginal groups, especially since the internet in Timor Leste is very expensive. If you compare the internet prices in ASEAN, Timor Leste is the most expensive. Because the internet is expensive, they are not free to search for credible information,” explained Zevonia.
Zevonia also mentioned the phenomenon of reproduction of old content, as well as the emergence of new online media before and during the election.
A resource person from Perludem, namely the Executive Director of Perludem, Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati, said that the phenomenon of disinformation in Timor Leste also occurred in Indonesia. From the research “Disruption of the Right to Vote: Phenomenon and Efforts to Overcome” (2021) conducted by Perludem, disinformation in the 2019 General Election was a lot about technical and electoral regulations, attacking election administrators, and intimidating mentally disabled voters.
"Disinformation in the 2019 Election, not only attacks election participants, but also attacks technical, regulatory, and election management institutions, even voters. We found disinformation about how to vote, for example, on social media, and it has the potential to cause voters to cast the wrong vote. So, there is a lot of disinformation that can be categorized as voter suppression or disruption of the right to vote,” explained Ninis.
Meta Strategy to fight disinformation, misinformation and malinformation
Misinformation Policy, APAC Head - Meta, Alice Budisatrijo announced that Meta has three strategies to fight misinformation. First, remove is applied to content that contains bullying, hate speech, violence or suggestions for violence, misinformation about health, deep fakes, and voter suppression or misinformation that can encourage people not to vote or deceive people from election information.
“If people post about the wrong date, location, time, and how to vote, so they want to deceive people about election information, we will delete it. Also, if someone says a candidate has resigned, even though he didn't, we will delete that too. Then, the instructions for cheating in elections, for example saying you can vote three times, or saying that if you take part in the election you can catch Covid, we will also delete that. And if there is content that encourages people to guard the election but uses violence, we will delete it," explained Alice.
Second, reduce. Content that contains misinformation but is not harmful will be reduced in distribution. Third, inform, which is a feature that notifies users who see misinformation content on the platform.
“So, not all misinformation is removed, because as a company, we shouldn't be the only ones who determine the truth. That's why we work with expert fact-checkers, independent, who are not part of Meta. Also, not all misinformation is true or false, but some are ambiguous, some are misleading,” said Alice.
Alice also informed that there are several features that are intended to help users consume information, including a label feature to notify users that the content they see contains incorrect information, a voter notification feature that posts content containing disinformation, a context button containing information on the author and publisher of the article, and old news notification or warning to users who share content that is more than three months old.
Today, Meta has partnered with fact-checking partners around the world. To match fact-checking standards, Meta provides certifications. Meta also appointed experts to become the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent agency. One of the members is Endy Bayuni, a senior journalist for The Jakarta Post. Endy also became one of the workshop resource persons with content moderation material.
In his presentation, Endy explained the stages of content moderation, the appeal mechanism for content removed by Facebook, as well as the limitations of content moderation for the Timor Leste context.
“There is a language barrier for content moderation in Timor Leste, because Tetum is not yet a moderated language by Facebook. That's a big problem. So, you can use Indonesian or Portuguese so that content can be moderated while encouraging Meta to accommodate Tetum," Endy alleged.
He encourages the public to actively participate in content moderation through the https://oversightboard.com/ website by providing comments and suggestions regarding the cases being handled. Over the past two years, the Facebook Oversight Board has handled 22 cases, 16 of which allege Meta improperly moderated content.
Digital Literacy is Need to be Scaled Up
All parties stated that increasing digital literacy is very necessary to eradicate misinformation in society. When people are equipped with critical thinking skills and identification of disinformation, people will not easily trust information, consume news from trusted media sites, and will not share suspicious content.
"The government can make this a curriculum so that the community as early as possible can be more critical, and have resistance to misinformation and disinformation," concluded Alice.
In Timor Leste, the Secretary of the State for Social Communication, Mericio Juvinal dos Reis 'Akara explained that his party was developing the Good News on Timor Leste platform and a platform to localize fake accounts and media that often produce disinformation as a digital literacy effort. The Timor Leste government is anti-blocking media sites that are not registered with the Press Council.
“We choose to prepare people to have knowledge, skills, and criticality. We also don't have a law to take down content that is not educational," said Mericio.
Senior Factchecker from the Indonesian Anti-Defamation Society (Mafindo), Adi Syafitrah shared tips to debunk disinformation in the form of photos. People can use Google reverse image search, Google Lens, Yandex, or Bing to get information about the first time a photo was uploaded to the internet.
“When it comes to video verification, there are three ways. First, use keywords that are heard in the video. For example, the keywords used are students who pass out from immunization. Google will show the same video that was first posted. Second, screenshots or snippets of images on the video, send to Yandex. A similar image will appear. Third, install the InVID extension," explained Adi. []
This article is translated by Catherine Natalia
