LAGOS, Nigeria(VOICE OF NAIJA)-Meta Platforms, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, aims to flag accounts associated with the government on its brand-new Twitter-like platform Threads.
“Areas such as labels for state-affiliated media and fact-checking are all areas where we see a lot of value, and it’s our aspiration to build that out expeditiously,” Josh Machin, Meta’s head of public policy for Australia, told the Senate inquiry.
The information was made public less than a week after Meta introduced Threads, a service that many people compare to Twitter.
Since entrepreneur Elon Musk turned Twitter private in 2022, tags from government-affiliated accounts have been erased, causing worries about the degradation of users’ media literacy.
Asked if Russian state-affiliated broadcaster RT or Chinese government-affiliated publisher Xinhua News Agency would be tagged accordingly on Threads, Machin said, “that’s our aspiration”.
“To the effect that any state-affiliated media are violating our policies, we would remove them,” he told the inquiry. “Broader functionality around tags… are all top priorities for us as we continue to bring out the product.”
Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms already have tags on the RT and Xinhua accounts noting they are state-controlled media from Russia and China, respectively.
RT’s Threads account lacked such a label when Reuters checked on Tuesday, while Xinhua did not appear to have a Threads account.
Australian senator James Paterson, asking Meta about its labelling plans for Threads, told the inquiry Twitter’s removal of foreign government affiliation tags was “extremely concerning from a transparency view”.
Twitter opted not to respond. Later on Tuesday, representatives from Twitter are expected to attend at the investigation.
An Australian plan to grant media regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) the authority to monitor and penalize social media corporations for facilitating the spread of misinformation and disinformation raised concerns for Meta, according to Machin.
Meta would be in favor of providing ACMA the authority to uphold an existing industry code of conduct, which includes aggressively removing fraudulent content, but “the draft legislation goes further,” he said, alluding to the plan currently undergoing industry input.
“We can see some potential for that power to be abused, or for it to be used in a way that chills legitimate free expression online,” he added.