The Facebook authorities on Thursday assured the Bangladesh Election Commission of working together to combat propaganda, rumours, false news, hate speeches and communal provocation.
The top social media platform will remove contents which may affect the upcoming 12th Parliamentary elections and harm communal harmony or spread hate speeches.
The Facebook authorities and the EC authorities came to this conclusion at a meeting held at the Election Commission building in the capital’s Agargaon.
The three-member delegation of the Facebook authorities was led by Ruzan Sarwar, head of Public Policy, Bangladesh. Other members of the delegation were Head of APAC Global Response Aidan Hoy and Regulatory Specialist Eugene Poh.
On the other hand, Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath, DEA-2 Project Director Brigadier General Abul Hasnat Mohammad Sayem, and NID System Manager Muhammad Ashraf Hossain represented the Election Commission in the meeting.
The Facebook delegation at first held a meeting with the EC’s IT and Technical experts and later held a separate meeting with Chief Election Commission Kazi Habibul Awal.
As the Facebook delegates did not make any comment, EC Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath briefed the media about the matters discussed in the meetings.
He said the main object of the meeting between the EC and the Facebook officials was combating disinformation centring the upcoming national elections.
The election is expected to be held in the last week of the month of December this year,
The EC Additional Secretary said, “The central challenge addressed during the meeting was the formulation of strategies to effectively prevent the propagation of disinformation on the Facebook platform.”
"The discussions revolved around mechanisms to promptly delete, remove, or block content that violates community standards, especially content that incites hate, promotes division, and breaches established regulations. Basically, these were the main topics of discussion in the meeting," he explained.
In reply to a query, he said that the implementation of these measures is anticipated to commence following the official announcement of the election schedule.
Calling it a preliminary discussion, the EC secretary said they will soon appoint a designated focal point within the Election Commission to establish ongoing communication with Facebook.
“The Facebook authorities will keep continuous contacts with us”, he said and continued as saying that it was the primary discussion and many more things will be discussed and they will do many more things as per the recommendations of the EC.
He further said that this liaison will facilitate the reporting of content deemed negative by the Election Commission, which Facebook will subsequently review and, if necessary, remove."
It has been noticed that ill-motivated vested quarters always remain busy with spreading of false news, rumours, hate speech, communal provocation and propaganda through social media like Facebook, Youtube and twitter. And since the next national election in Bangladesh is getting closer, the vested quarters have intensified their activities as part of their attempts to mislead the users of the social media as well as the mass people.
According to sources, some other groups like youtubers and admins of different pages in Facebook are also found to be engaged in the wrongdoings in view of being benefitted commercially through illegal means.
Moreover, communal and fundamentalist groups remain busy with spreading provocative contents to harm and destroy the communal harmony.
According to sources, since the condition of the social media is considered to be volatile, the authorities concerned have taken the initiative of taking measures through discussion.