More than 5 million pieces of content during 2022 presidential elections taken down from Facebook and Instagram for violations

Over 5 million pieces of content were taken down from Facebook and Instagram during the 2022 presidential elections for violating Facebook’s violence and incitement policies, officials of Facebook owner Meta disclosed on Friday, August 5.

At the company’s August 5 virtual briefing, Meta Public Policy Manager for Content Melissa Chin presented findings from the company’s quarterly adversarial threat report which tracked “covert influence operations.” Chin disclosed that the purge affected posts from Instagram and Facebook from January 9 to May 16, 2022, the weeks leading to and immediately after the 2022 Philippine presidential elections.

Many posts were removed for “high-severity violence,” which refers to threats leading to serious injury and statements expressing violence related to voting, voter registration or election results.

Additionally, an estimated 10,000 accounts were taken down for engaging in “inauthentic behavior” or the use of fake accounts. Meta Global Threat Disruption Director David Agronovich explained that IB refers to an effort to mislead people or Facebook about the popularity of content, the purpose of a community or the identity of the people behind it.

Meta also deleted more than 550,000 posts for violating the platform’s bullying and harassment policies and removed some 670,000 posts for containing hate speech.

In an April 2022 report, Meta detailed its use of artificial intelligence trained in Filipino, as well as moderates who speak Filipino and Cebuano, to be able to proactively detect and remove hate speech, bullying and harassment, and content that violates its violence and incitement policies.