Africa-Press – Mauritius. The Mauritian Government, in a bid to strengthen its collaboration with Meta (Facebook) for a quicker and more effective response to misinformation, has agreed on a series of workshops being held by Meta in collaboration with the Ministry of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation today and tomorrow.
The objectives are to better understand Meta’s mechanism and enhance the knowledge of multilateral institutions and various stakeholders, while raising awareness for a better use of the social network platform.
The Minister of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation, Mr Darsanand Balgobin, made this statement, today, during the opening ceremony of a Content and Misinformation Policies Roundtable organised by Meta, at Hennessy Park Hotel in Ebène.
The Head Public Policy for Southern Africa Region, Meta, Ms Nomonde Gongxeka-Seopa, and other personalities were present on this occasion. Some 23 participants physically attended the Roundtable while others participated virtually.
In his address, Minister Balgobin highlighted that this Roundtable was the first workshop organised by Meta and his Ministry to tackle various misinformation campaigns and to propose a comprehensive approach to help address information crisis and fake news on the social network platform.
He recalled that the Mauritian Cybercrime Online Reporting System of the National Computer Board recorded more than 1,600 incidents related to Facebook since January 2021 to date, while the Cybercrime Unit of the Mauritius Police Force recorded 218 complaints related to Facebook.
The forthcoming series of workshops and informative sessions between Meta and various stakeholders in Mauritius, underlined the Minister, aim at: reducing the spread of false news, harmful contents and misinformation; reducing hate speech/incitement to violence which may trigger civil unrest, social disorder and economic hardships; and showing to the Mauritian Government and its people the steps taken by Facebook to tackle misuse of the platform.
Other groups like children and teenagers, who are the most active on Facebook, will also be targeted next year, he added. Nonetheless, Minister Balgobin conceded that one of the main issues which was constantly being flagged by the concerned authorities dealing with complaints pertaining to Facebook was the relatively long time taken by the latter to remove contents which were causing prejudice to Mauritian users.
He expressed his wish that a solution to this issue could be found during deliberations, adding that with the help of the Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Bill, recently passed at the National Assembly, Government had set the ground for addressing the issues of fake profiles and giving out false information.
For her part, Ms Gongxeka-Seopa underscored that the Content and Misinformation Policies Roundtables were engagements hosted by Meta so as to provide detailed information about its current policies and practices to its communities and stakeholders.
The roundtables, she remarked, also offered Meta an opportunity to gather inputs and insights from its stakeholders to help devise ways to constantly improve existing policies, processes and platforms.
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