Election Fraud Might Have Already Started in S’pore as Facebook Has Removed Fake Accounts Related to S’pore General Election

The election date hasn’t been announced yet but several people have been hard at work trying to influence the upcoming General Elections.

At least, that was what Facebook Singapore seemingly said.

Facebook Has Removed Fake Accounts Related to S’pore General Election

On 11 Jun 2020, Facebook’s head of public policy Clara Koh revealed that Facebook teams dedicated to Singapore’s election has been hard at work since Jul 2019.

Their jobs? To keep a lookout for inauthentic behaviour, whether coordinated or general, on the platform.

And so far, they have taken action on several accounts when doing their “ongoing” and “corrective” sweeps on the platform.

While not much was revealed about what these accounts did, she said that they were caught for misrepresenting themselves.

She added:

“We’ve been doing sweeps to ensure that we remove accounts that are impersonating candidates and elected officials, and we’ll continue to do proactive work to look (for) and remove – or at least take action – on accounts that are misrepresenting themselves on our platform.”

In other words, if you see a Lee Hsien Loong going around talking about drinking bleach, it might not be him.

Report the account to FB and if it’s really him, Goody Feed will have something to write about liao.

FB Also Has Teams On The Lookout For ‘Foreign Government Interference’

It seems that Facebook has learnt well from the 2016 fiasco which got Donald Trump elected into Presidency. They acknowledged that there was Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections.

Ms Koh said that ahead of the elections here, they also have teams on the lookout for foreign government interference.

She added that be it foreign-led efforts at stirring up issues in another country or a government’s operation targeted at its own people.

It was added that Facebook has learnt a lot from past lessons, and will be putting all this knowledge to work in preserving the integrity of the elections.

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More Restrictions On Political Ads

To reduce the possibility of such things happening, Facebook is making it harder to get a political ad online.

For those who wants to run a political ad in Singapore, a legitimate form of Singaporean identity (such as the NRIC) must be uploaded first for verification.

Users must have their identity and location verified, as well as have a “paid for” disclaimer before they can run a political ad.

More Fact-Checking Capability

It’s not just accounts and ads, Facebook is looking to improve on the news content in Singapore as well.

They’ve added Reuters to their team of third-party-fact-checkers to detect and rate content in Singapore as false.

Such content, Facebook says, will have a warning attached to it and have the post pushed lower on the news feed.

They will also be removing “misinformation that misleads people about the voting process or procedure, or looks to suppress voting”.

FB Reaching Out With A Helping Hand

Because of Covid-19, everything goes online, including rallies.

But not everyone knows how to use Facebook effectively, which is why they are extending a helping hand to political parties who need help.

They had reached out to South Korea’s politicians during their election in Apr 2020.

“COVID-19 means a lot of activity starts coming online, and our local teams here in Singapore have likewise been re-engaging with political parties, making sure that they can use social media effectively.”

All in all, I think we can expect to see more political party logos whenever we log into Facebook from now on.

To know more about the election that’s rumoured to be coming very soon, you can read this article:

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