Facebook fact-checkers: Kenyan presidency post congratulating Museveni ‘erroneously’ flagged as false

NAIROBI – Fact-checkers at social media giant Facebook on Sunday flagged, as false, a Kenyan presidency statement congratulating Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni after election commission in Kampala on Saturday declared him winner in heavily contested elections.

What did Kenyatta’s office said?

Earlier on Sunday, the Kenyan state house congratulated Museveni on election results in a statement posted on  Facebook and Twitter (both have now been deleted) saying “President Uhuru Kenyatta has termed President Yoweri Museveni’s re-election as a testimony of the confidence the people of Uganda have in his leadership.

“In a congratulatory message to the Ugandan leader, President Kenyatta said he looks forward to continue working with President Museveni in deepening the strong bilateral ties between Kenya and Uganda for the mutual benefit of the people of the two Republics.

“President Kenyatta said Uganda had achieved stability and registered consistent economic growth under President Museveni, and assured of Kenya’s commitment to continue partnering with Uganda in advancing regional and continental integration agenda through the East African Community, the African Union and other multilateral platforms.”

‘False information’

Almost immediately after the presidency posted the message on the social media platform, Facebook flagged the statement as a ‘false information’ because “the same information was checked in another post by independent fact-checkers.”

The State House later on took down the social media congratulatory messages but fact-checkers later acknowledged that the post was flagged by mistake because the post contained an image of the Ugandan leader which had been used in a 2019 Facebook post that was flagged as false.

“The automation system erroneously marked the image as false, because it was previously used in a post with false information,” PesaCheck said in an explanatory statement posted on its website.

“The error appears to have originated from the automation system, which looks for similar content that has been fact-checked.

“In this case, both posts shared the same photo of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.

“But the post by State House did not have any false information that had been looked into by fact-checkers.”