JOHANNESBURG – Deepfake Donald Trumps praising key contenders, claims the vote was rigged – South Africa is awash with online disinformation as political players thrash out a coalition deal after an historic election.
Digital activists want to monitor who is behind all of the post-vote propaganda but say they are hampered by high costs and high-walled platforms – the kind of challenges their Western counterparts rarely face.
“It’s like we are fighting against it (disinformation) with our hands tied behind our back,” said William Bird, the director of Media Monitoring Africa, a South African news and human rights watchdog.
Complaints to MMA’s disinformation reporting website Real411 increased by about six-fold during the election period, according to Bird.
If one were to believe the propaganda on social media, Trump endorsed former president Jacob Zuma’s new party, while the leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, was in cahoots with the CIA to steal the elections.
Some digital rights and research groups called for open access to social platform companies like Google, Meta, TikTok, and X, in a statement signed by about a dozen of them. This is arguably because of the recent deluge in fake news, half stories, and downright lies across these platforms.
They say that their aim is ‘to protect election integrity’, adding that this time around, especially in this delicate post-election period, nobody should be so compliant as to sit back and fold their arms and wait.
Google and X did not respond to requests for comment.
In an emailed response, Meta said that researchers in South Africa could use the Meta Content Library, which includes access to Facebook and Instagram’s archives and is hosted by ICPSR at the University of Michigan.
Access, functionality and interface of the Library have all been slated by dozens of digital rights groups.
TikTok said that there were future plans to equal API access, rolling it out to all geographies. The changes currently apply only in parts of Europe and the United States. A timeline was not yet clear.
It is easier for researchers to get platform data in the Global North because of European laws, and partners in U.S. universities made available cheaper media monitoring tools, according to Bird.
The dozen digital rights and research groups signed the statement pre-election.
But this post-election period, when voters may have “their guards down”, is just as critical, said Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei of the philanthropic Open Society Foundations-Africa.
It’s in this light that initiatives by Meta’s Oversight Board—of which Asare-Kyei is a member—TikTok’s Election Centre, and Google’s fact-checking coalition are set up to help control election disinformation.
Signatories of the letter state further that such access would allow for the “realtime collection of data at the source” to shore up efforts against the propagation of disinformation and hate speech both across the continent of Africa and in South Africa specifically.
“We need meaningful access to the systems and information, and importantly, we need meaningful access to our own data,” Bird said in an interview with Context online.
Post-poll tension
The country’s May election marked the first time since the end of apartheid rule three decades ago that the African National Congress party lost its majority voting base.
State television SABC reported Friday the ANC would form a government of national unity with three other parties including the pro-business Democratic Alliance.
He cited riots that broke out in Kenya, Brazil, and the United States after election results were challenged online, stating that South Africa could not rule out the same if hate speech and disinformation were not properly controlled.
In 2021, riots and looting rocked the KwaZulu-Natal province of the country when former President Jacob Zuma was taken into custody and jailed for refusing to appear at a corruption inquiry.
His supporters went to the streets to demand his release, a situation that degenerated into widespread looting and violence that claimed more than 300 lives and damage estimated in billions of rands.
“The period after the votes. is critical. That is where most of the harmful, toxic, and potentially violence-inducing pieces of content get spread,” said Asare-Kyei.
That will be the role of Meta’s Oversight Board, a 22-strong “appeal mechanism” that combs through millions of complaints about content that is potentially harmful, checking if Meta is adhering to standards of human rights.
However, the board cannot do this in isolation, said Asare-Kyei, who lent her support to researchers demanding easier access to platform APIs.
“It would be very important. Data is key; it is a human right.”.
Yet Scott Timcke – a senior researcher at the digital policy think tank Research ICT Africa – warned against seeing data as a silver bullet.
“The vast majority of politics in South Africa doesn’t occur on platforms. you still need to be attentive to newspapers, TV and radio,” said Timcke.
He said that at the root of dis- and misinformation concerns lies broad “alienation” of voters, and access to data should go with a wider social struggle for equality.
Dignity, Equality
Due to the high cost and labour-intensiveness, and limited data access, the researchers could not attempt a “deep dive” at a pre-election workshop for groups attempting to monitor South African election hate speech and disinformation, wrote Guy Berger, a media professor at Rhodes University.
Organisations are now using the law to try and win more information from social media giants.
In February, the free speech non-profit wrote asks to the platforms for information on how they planned to protect against disinformation during the election. Formal access to information notices were then issued by CFE, asking for detailed documentation following the silence met with the question.
All platforms said they were not covered by local laws and the data was anyway not in the country. CFE said they shared “generic” and “inadequate” information, spurring the non-profit to request an intervention from the country’s Information Regulator.
CFE is still waiting on their response.
And Bird said digital researchers would not make do with dodgy data when the Global North had top-notch access.
“It’s like saying we gonna sell you this excellent car. but in North America, it comes with an airbag and a GPS, but down here you don’t even have a seatbelt, and we don’t fit it as standard unless you come and force us to,” said Bird.
“We need dignity and equality just like everybody else.”