Facebook to wade into Voice referendum with funding

afr.com:

Meta will provide a one-off funding increase to its news offering in an attempt to crack down on misinformation in the lead up to the referendum over whether to introduce an Indigenous Voice to parliament.

The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and a newly launched Twitter variant called Threads, faced heavy criticism for allowing misinformation during the 2016 presidential election in the United States.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta was widely criticised for its handling of misinformation ahead of the 2016 presidential election in the United States. AP

But Meta now has a playbook for addressing controversial public events, which its public policy boss Mia Garlick said would be expanded for the referendum scheduled for later this year.

“We’re committed to playing our part to safeguard the integrity of the referendum,” Ms Garlick said in a company blog post.

Meta will give an undisclosed amount to the Australian Associated Press, RMIT’s FactLab and Agence France-Presse to boost their fact checking programs, which identify false articles. Meta will warn users about sharing links to those articles, limit how many people see links from those who ignore the warnings, and add a disclaimer to readers.

The plan is similar to one eyed by the Australian Electoral Commission, but is notable because Meta has largely turned away from news content in Australia after it was forced to start paying publishers for their material in 2021. Meta has said it will cut off news to Canadians before similar laws go into effect in that country in about six months.

Voice advocates have accused their opponents of spreading misinformation about the proposed institution and warned that the aggressive tenor of debate could be damaging to the