According to a report this week from the watchdog organization Global Witness, Facebook is once again failing to detect obvious misinformation surrounding elections, this time in the country of Brazil.

To test Facebook, the advocacy group says it submitted test ads promoting the wrong election date, incorrect voting methods and some questioning the integrity of the election. It also placed these ads from outside of Brazil, did not use a Brazilian payment method, and was not required to disclose who was behind the ads. All this flies in the face of the safeguards that the social media giant says it has put in place. That’s why the group was so harsh in its criticism, blasting Facebook for being dishonest about its capabilities.

“What’s quite clear from the results of this investigation and others is that their content moderation capabilities and the integrity systems that they deploy in order to mitigate some of the risk during election periods, it’s just not working,” Global Witness said. “We are constantly having to take Facebook at their word. And without a verified independent third-party audit, we just can’t hold Meta or any other tech company accountable for what they say they’re doing.”

Hopefully this very public report lights a fire under Facebook to improve its content moderation. However, the company seems to think it’s already doing a good job, so it may not have a response at all.

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