Posts in Amharic reviewed by Reuters this month attacked the Oromo and Tigray ethnic populations in vicious terms that clearly violated Facebook's ban on discussing ethnic groups using "violent or dehumanising speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion."
Facebook removed the two posts Reuters inquired about. The company added that it had erred in allowing one of them, from December 2017, to remain online following an earlier user report.
For officials such as Saneem in Fiji, Facebook's efforts to improve content moderation and language support are painfully slow. Saneem said he warned Facebook months in advance of the election in the archipelago of 900,000 people. Most of them use Facebook, with half writing in English and half in Fijian, he estimated.
"Social media has the ability to completely derail an election," Saneem said.
Other social media companies face the same problem to varying degrees.
Facebook-owned Instagram said its 1,179-word community guidelines are in 30 out of 51 languages offered to users. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook as well, has terms in nine of 58 supported languages, Reuters found.
Alphabet Inc's YouTube presents community guidelines in 40 of 80 available languages, Reuters found. Twitter Inc's rules are in 37 of 47 supported languages, and Snap Inc's in 13 out of 21.
"A lot of misinformation gets spread around and the problem with the content publishers is the reluctance to deal with it," Saneem said. "They do owe a duty of care. "
