including posts and advertising, using AI to identify and delete fake accounts (Ankhtuya 2020a). However, not all countries have received the same level of support from Facebook when it comes to election-related mis- and disinformation. In November 2019, it was observed that not all of the transparency tools that had been built by Facebook for other countries to monitor election ads had been launched in Sri Lanka (Wong 2019). This implies that the policy is not consistently applied. In the run-up to the 2020 elections in Singapore, Google said it would no longer accept political ads as of December 2, 2019, as they were now regulated under a new “fake news” law in the country. The law in question, also known as the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), had been introduced in October 2019. Google stated that it would prohibit ads that “influence or seek to influence the outcome of a general election” and “ads that promote the interests of a political party or other group of persons organised in Singapore for political objects” (BBC News 2019b). The move was contested by an opposition party, who said the move would deprive Singaporean voters of information (BBC News 2019b). Google announced on November 13, 2019 that from November 15, 2019 to January 17, 2020 all ads by political candidates in Taiwan would be suspended (Everington 2019). THE HIRING OF FREELANCERS FOR MISAND DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS A 2021 article by journalist Ramsha Jahangir highlighted how online job boards were being used to hire workers for mis- and disinformation campaigns. In June 2021 Facebook removed a network of pages, groups, profiles, and Instagram accounts for engaging in CIB. Several of these pages had represented themselves as international media organizations. Graphika stated that numerous stories shared by these fake “media” accounts were uploaded by employees of a marketing firm based in Islamabad. Actors and voice-over artists were hired to promote criticism of India and praise of Pakistan, and to advocate the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). One freelancer who had been hired for this work via the online freelancing platform Fiverr claimed that she did not know that her face had been used for propaganda purposes (Jahangir 2021a). The fact that freelancers can be hired to facilitate the spread of disinformation through these online platforms is a concerning development. I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH The role of freelancers in facilitating political disinformation is significant in the Philippines, according to Jason Cabañes, who notes that these freelancers will be hired by people who run political campaigns to create content and then introduce it onto platforms like Twitter and Facebook (interview, 2021). This phenomenon could be a factor for platforms to take into account when they consider taking measures against information disorder. CRITICISMS AND CHALLENGES Despite the many actions taken by digital platforms, it seems they can still do more. One allegation that has been leveled at social media companies is that they have been slow and inconsistent in identifying and reacting to mis- and disinformation on their platforms. For example, these accusations have been levelled at Facebook, as mis- and disinformation spread on the platform has been linked to offline violence in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar. At the time of writing, in 2021, it seemed that TikTok was repeating Facebook’s mistakes in Myanmar. After the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021, government soldiers used TikTok to spread propaganda and threaten demonstrators against the coup with violence. Digital rights advocates in Myanmar stated that TikTok had failed to make connections with civil society or to hire experts who speak Burmese in order to enforce community standards. New moderators fluent in Burmese were only recruited in December 2020, and by this time propaganda linked to the military had already spread on the platform (Guest, Fishbein, and Lusan 2021). Ayesha Binte Towhid, a researcher at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), argued that these companies build their content policies based on the environment of their origin countries, with the result that these policies are not necessarily relevant in the context of the Global South (interview, 2021). For example, Facebook’s policies may define hate speech in a way to which people in the Global South may not relate, because hate speech as defined by Facebook may not occur in that particular environment. There is a lack of consideration for other ethnic and religious contexts in these policies (Guest, Fishbein, and Lusan 2021). Asia – 2 1 2