The National Federation Party (NFP) has raised concerns regarding the regulation of content online during the media blackout period with the Multinational Observer Group (MOG).
In an interview with this newspaper, party general secretary Leba Seni Nabou said they had also shared their own experiences with the team from the 2018 election, where a similar situation was noted.
“We’ve also highlighted that social media, bits of it, and some of our experiences from 2018 where during the blackout period, there were Facebook trolls seeding fake news, false news, really derogatory news also on Messenger, and because most of the parties went offline, we’re not allowed to respond to them,” she said.
“So a lot of the people on social media were not getting it on the news feed, but it was travelling through Messenger and people were believing things like “oh, you know, if Biman Prasad and Rabuka come in, you will lose Diwali”.
“They’re also very racially segmented, and demographically segmented fake news. We’ve raised that, we had lodged a complaint with the FEO. They did not rule in our favour.”
Ms Nabou also said they had held a session with a team from the Facebook office in Sydney.
“When it comes to the time when there’s going to be no regulation around, which is a blackout period, that we find very problematic.
“What we have seen is also a surge of like fake profiles, coming up and trying to you know cause disharmony in proper conversations or you know, trying to sow discord racially, or otherwise. So, that’s happening.
“We are preempting that that will be on the rise and closer and closer as we get to the elections. Now that social media trends have also shifted, like I see a lot of politicians are moved to TikTok. That’s great, too. There’s a different demographic there.
“Certainly there’s going to be some problems there, which some people will capitalise on. And I hope the elections office isn’t relying only on Facebook, but also TikTok to be able to regulate, have conversations and that civil conversations are happening.”
