Meta urges updated rules after fake US President Joe Biden posts

Meta’s policy on deeply false content urgently needs an update as a major election approaches, a watchdog said on Monday in a decision over a manipulated video of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Last year, a video of Biden voting with his adult granddaughter went viral after it was faked to appear that he touched her breast inappropriately.

The remarks were reported to Meta, and later to the company’s oversight board, as hate speech.

The tech giant’s oversight board, which independently reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions, said the platform was technically correct in keeping the videos online.

But it also insists the company’s rules on manipulating content are no longer fit for purpose.

The committee’s warning comes amid concerns about the widespread misuse of false information by artificial intelligence-driven applications on social media platforms in a critical election year, not just in the United States but around the world as large swaths of the world’s population head to the polls.

The board said Meta’s policy in its current form is “incoherent, lacks a persuasive rationale and does not focus appropriately on how content is created”.

The committee added that this was not focused on “the specific harm it was designed to prevent (for example, harm to the electoral process)”.

Meta said in response that it is “reviewing the oversight committee’s guidance and will respond publicly to their recommendations within 60 days in accordance with the charter.”

The committee said that in the Biden case, no rules were violated “because the video did not use artificial intelligence to manipulate and did not depict Biden saying something he did not say.”

But the board insisted that “non-AI modifications are common and are not necessarily less misleading.”

For example, most smartphones have easy-to-use features that can edit content into false information, sometimes referred to as “cheap fakes,” it noted.

The committee also emphasized that, unlike videos, altered audio content is not within the current scope of the policy, although deepfake audios can be very effective in deceiving users.

There has been a robocall impersonating Biden in the United States urging New Hampshire residents not to vote in the Democratic primary, prompting state authorities to launch an investigation into possible voter suppression.

The oversight board urged Meta to reconsider its rigged media policy “as soon as possible given the number of elections in 2024.”

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from Yonhap News Agency-AFP)