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6 Ways Facebook Is Helping to Protect 2020 Election in Ghana?

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As Facebook continues to play a larger role in civic discussions around the world, we are working hard to prevent any abuse of our platforms, especially during elections. We have made massive investments to help prevent election interference, to fight misinformation and voter suppression, and to increase transparency in political advertising

Here’s what you need to know about the steps we are taking ahead of the 2020 election in Ghana.

Keeping People Safe

• Keeping people on Facebook and Instagram safe is always our top priority—but this is especially important during elections, when highly charged campaigns can lead to violence and harassment.

  • We have a global set of rules—called our Community Standards—which set out what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. These include strict rules on inciting violence, hate speech, voter suppression, and harassment.
  • If someone shares something that you think violates our rules we want to hear about it, which is why we have reporting tools available so people can let us know and we can investigate. If you post something that goes against our rules, we will remove it.
  • Since 2016 we have tripled the size of the teams working on safety and security to more than 35,000 people, and hired more systems engineers, security experts and content reviewers, and hired more systems engineers, security experts and content reviewers, including native language speakers in Swahili.
  • We have also pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to find and remove harmful content quicker. Between April and June we removed over 15 million pieces of graphic and violent content globally—we detected over 99% proactively, before anyone has to report it to us.

Combating Misinformation

  • We are working hard to fight the spread of misinformation on our services, because we know that people want to see accurate information on Facebook and Instagram—and so do we.
  • Multiple independent studies now show the Facebook has cut engagement with false news by more than half.
  • We remove misinformation which could lead to imminent violence or physical harm, such as statements from content that present a credible threat to the public or personal safety of people.
  • We also remove misinformation which could prevent people from voting such as false news related to the dates, location, time, and voting methods.
  • For false claims which don’t violate our Community Standards, we work with over 70 independent fact-checking organisations around the world. In Ghana we work with Dubawa to review and rate the accuracy of content shared on Facebook and Instagram
  • Warning labels are attached to content rated false or partially false by these fact checkers. When people see these warnings, research shows that the majority do not click through to the original post. Content rated “false” or “partly false” also receives reduced distribution in Facebook’s newsfeed, so people are less likely to see it. We also show related articles from fact-checkers for more context and notify users if a story they’ve shared is rated as false.
  • We also want to make sure people can spot false news and know how to flag it to us. That’s why we started an we started a campaign in Ghana to distribute educational tips on Facebook on how to spot false news—called ‘Three Questions To Help Stamp Out False News’.

Akua Gyekye writes on how Facebook Is Supporting Elections Across Africa

Addressing Virality

• We’ve made fundamental changes to our products to address virality, and reduce the spread of content—including misinformation—that can amplify and exacerbate violence and conflict.

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Fighting Interference

• We block millions of fake accounts at registration every day, and we continuously build and update our technical systems to make it easier to respond to reports of abuse, detect and remove spam, identify and eliminate fake accounts, and prevent accounts from being compromised.

  • On WhatsApp we’ve banned mass-messaging. We use machine-learning to identify and ban accounts engaged in this behavior, and we ban around 2 million accounts a month globally for this type of abuse.
  • We’ve also reduced the number of people you can forward a message to to just five chats at once and introduced the ‘forwarded’ and ‘highly forwarded’ labels to highlight when something has been shared multiple times. We have since further reduced the number of people you can send a “highly forwarded” message to to just one chat at once, which has resulted in a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages on WhatsApp.
  • We recently announced that we are introducing these forward limits to Messenger too, so messages can only be forwarded to five people or groups at a time. Limiting forwarding is an effective way
    to slow the spread of viral misinformation and harmful content that has the potential to cause real world harm.

Increasing the Transparency

• We believe political discussion and debate should be transparent to every voter, which is why over the past few years we’ve introduced a number of tools that provide more information about political ads on Facebook and Instagram.

 

  • In August, we made these political ads transparency tools mandatory in Ghana. As a result, anybody who wants to run political ads in Ghana must now go through a verification process to prove who they are and that they live in Ghana. We then run additional checks
    to ensure compliance with our policies.
  • Every political ad in Ghana is also labelled with a “paid by” disclaimer, so you can see who paid for them. We also put all political ads that run in Ghana in our Ads Library so that everyone can see what ads are running, what types of people saw them and how much was spent. This fully searchable archive will store these ads for seven years.
  • These changes mean that political advertising on Facebook and Instagram is now more transparent than other forms of election campaigning, whether that’s billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail, leaflets or targeted emails.
  • Between April and June, we disabled 1.5 billion fake accounts globally—up from 800m during the same period in 2018.
  • We have tripled the size of the teams working on safety and security to more than 35,000 people and hired specialised teams to investigate and remove sophisticated networks of Pages, Groups and accounts on Facebook involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour—when groups of people using fake profiles work together to manipulate public debate. These can be domestic campaigns, or campaigns operated by foreign entities, including foreign governments.
  • In the past year alone, we’ve taken down over 50 of these networks worldwide, many ahead of major democratic elections.

Civic  Engagement

  • Helping to build informed and civically engaged communities is central to our work around elections. In Ghana, we have engaged in conversations with civic stakeholders such as the Electoral Commission and civil society organisations to inform them on our work around elections, and have also conducted virtual training on ads enforcement and civic engagement with political parties.
  • We have focussed on educating these groups on how Facebook can be a positive tool for civic engagement. We also talked them through our Community Standards which govern what is allowed and not allowed on Facebook and Instagram, our ad transparency tools and the steps they can take to stay safe while using our platforms.
  • We have focussed on educating these groups on how Facebook can be a positive tool for civic engagement. We also talked them through on our Community Standards which govern what
    is allowed and not allowed on Facebook and Instagram, our ad transparency tools and the steps they can take to keep safe while using our platforms.

 

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‘Kuami Eugene is alive and receiving treatment’ – Lynx Entertainment issues statement

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Following news of Ghanaian musician Kuami Eugene’s involvement in a car accident, Lynx Entertainment, the record label representing him, has issued an official press statement. (more…)

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Ghana International Trade Fair Center on the eviction and demolition of Fantasy Dome

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The Ghana Trade Fair Company Limited has dismantled the “Fantasy Dome,” owned by Fantasy Entertainment, which has been on the trade fair site since January 2018, to pave way for developers to complete the ongoing “Ghana International Trade Fair Center Development Project.”

The dismantled facility will be available to its owners for it to be relocated.

The tenancy agreement between owners of the Fantasy Dome and the Trade Fair Company Limited expired on 31 December 2023. Since then, all efforts by the management of the Trade Fair Company Limited to get “Fantasy Entertainment” to remove the “Fantasy Dome” from the Trade Fair site has proved futile.

The CEO of Fantasy Entertainment has stated in a Saturday March 17th interview that he has an injunction, but the Trade Fair Company Limited has VEHEMENTLY DENIED any such injunction. In fact the company states that it has not been served with any court processes and no injunction was served on the day of the demolition.

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Ironically, access to the portion of the site where the “Fantasy Dome” is situated at the Trade Fair site is vital for developers to construct the power and water infrastructure for the project as well as the drainage system to serve the new Ghana International Trade Fair Center. The dome has hampered the progress of these works for approximately 12 months.

To this end, the Trade Fair Company Limited on Saturday, 16 March 2024, embarked on an exercise supervised by the Ghana Police Service with support from the National Security Ministry to take down the “Fantasy Dome” in order for construction works on the Trade Fair site to proceed freely.

Brief background

The Ghana Trade Fair Company (GTFCL) was established by an Executive Instrument (EI) in 1960 as a project to facilitate Ghana’s post-independence trade and industrialization drive.

The Executive Instrument 10 acquired a 239.92-acre land for this purpose and to showcase Ghana’s exports with the view to attracting investors into its fledgling economy.

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From its origins in 1960, GTFCL has metamorphosed into a limited liability company strategically positioned to promote and facilitate trade in Ghana.

There have been attempts by successive governments to revive the company through various public-private partnership initiatives. These attempts have focused on redeveloping the entire center under various themes. The current redevelopment project is considered as a core part of President Nana Akufo Addo’s vision to position Ghana as a trade hub for West Africa.

The new Ghana International Trade Fair Center Development Project, when completed, would have a convention and an exhibition center, a technology hub, retail mall, commercial offices, hotel accommodation, and public realm spaces.
Infrastructure works and construction of the major exhibition center are now underway.

It is under the Akufo-Addo government that the company was revived to successfully undertake an aggressive redevelopment of the site. The management and board of directors of the company under this government have worked tirelessly to turn the company into a commercially viable business today and have secured funding from development partners to develop the site.

The new GTFC

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The new Ghana International Trade Fair Center Development Project, when completed, would have a convention and an exhibition center, a technology hub, retail mall, commercial offices, hotel accommodation, and public realm spaces.
Infrastructure works and construction of the major exhibition center are now underway.

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Kuami Eugene Survives Car Crash, Sustains Injuries

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Multiple award-winning Ghanaian singer and songwriter, Eugene Kwame Marfo, professionally known as Kuami Eugene narrowly escaped a near-fatal accident when his car rammed into a tipper truck on the night of Sunday, March 17, 2024. (more…)

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Ghana’s Blitz Bazawule’s ‘The Color Purple’ dominates 2024 NAACP Image Awards

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“The Color Purple” a film directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule dominated at the 55th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday night, taking home four accolades including outstanding motion picture. (more…)

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Mix Master Garzy’s 2MG Music foundation inspires hope through music on Ghana’s Independence Day

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Ghana Independence Day holds great significance for the nation, but for 2MG Music Foundation, it became a day of deeper meaning as they embarked on a journey of compassion at Orthopedic Training Centre in Nsawam.

Benjamin Garzy Mensah, popularly known as Mix Master Garzy is the Founder and CEO of 2MG Music Foundation, an NGO based in Ghana which is also affiliated with the 2MG Music record label.

Their inspiring mission of “Touching Lives through Music: was definitely achieved at the OTC Camp. On Ghana Independence Day, the music foundation arrived at the hospital loaded with instruments, ready to uplift spirits and bring smiles to the patients.

As the musicians played, OTC came alive with the soothing sounds of music. Children had the chance to showcase their talents through dance and song, creating a fun filled inclusive atmosphere. Performing artists rallied to show their unwavering support for the event such as Niashun, Akua Music and Mr Drew and the Band Masters who held the fort for the live entertainment.

The music served as a welcome distraction for the OTC members, reminding them of joy and resilience amidst their physical challenges. Each song imparted a message of hope, showing them, they were not alone in their journey towards healing. Beyond melodies, they forged connections and touched hearts, leaving a lasting impression on children, families and staff. Inspired, they pledged to continue spreading joy through music.

In commemorating Ghana Independence Day at OTC, 2MG Music Foundation embarked on a meaningful journey of compassion and solidarity. Through music, they brought smiles and hope to all, reminding us of the importance of supporting one another in times of need.

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K.K. Kabobo passes on after battling liver disease

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News reaching Ameyaw Debrah Media is that Renowned Highlife musician, Kwabena Kwakye Kabobo, professionally known as K. K. Kabobo has passed on to glory. (more…)

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