Meta will set up a special device to prevent its Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms from being used to disrupt the French presidential election, the American group announced on Wednesday.
In addition to traditional partnerships with the media, Meta will create "in the coming weeks" a "virtual operational center" to be able to observe the activity of its platforms and react in the event of suspicious events, indicated the Web giant during a meeting. 'a press conference.
This center, which will not have a physical existence, will be active 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. It will call on "data experts" or "threat intelligence", as well as engineers and lawyers, based in Europe or the United States.
For the moment, Meta has detected "no" coordinated attempt to influence the upcoming French elections, but "we remain vigilant", said Anton Batesti, in charge of the group's public affairs for France.
📢 As part of the #Elections2022, today we are launching several initiatives in 🇫🇷 to strengthen our efforts in #media education and share with users the best practices to adopt in the face of information!
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đź“°https://t.co/iEQYvzcCtI
— Meta France (@MetaFrance) February 16, 2022
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"More and more domestic attacks"
Beyond attempts at interference from other countries, Meta also monitors attempts at manipulation from French actors, he also indicated.
Recent foreign elections have indeed shown that we are seeing "more and more domestic attacks", he said.
Facebook's parent company also announced an "active collaboration" with partners such as Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Loopsider to design video content to prevent misinformation, aimed at young people in particular.
WhatsApp users in France will also be able to "report by a simple message any potential false information to AFP, which can respond by sharing an article verifying this information", according to Meta.
In addition, the group has designed free training on this application to learn how to spot disinformation, in collaboration with the France 24 channel and MediaWise, an American media education program from the NGO Poynter Institute.
For several years, Meta and the other social media giants have been under pressure from numerous experts, researchers and politicians, who accuse them of undermining democracy by being vehicles of massive disinformation.
Marked by the 2016 US elections, during which Facebook was used for pro-Donald Trump electoral propaganda purposes, the company has multiplied initiatives with the media to make people forget this episode.
However, the group refuses to open up to researchers and specialists the mountains of data collected concerning the use and social impact of its platforms, an increasingly pressing claim.
"We must acquire the means to establish, with indisputable scientific precision, the global impact of social networks on society", wrote last week in a forum in Le Monde a collective of elected officials, researchers and actors of the digital.
“These resources will only be obtained with full sharing of platform data with researchers,” they said.
Meta pays more than 80 media worldwide, including AFP, under a content verification program.
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