There is a growing concern about political misinformation on social media ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Despite technology companies' promises to tackle escalating polarization and mistrust, misinformation about voting and elections is rampant on social media with less than two weeks until polls close.
Calls to Combat Election-Related Misinformation
More than 60 organizations wrote to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to raise awareness of election-related disinformation and urge digital companies to be more cautious.
This action was initiated by organizations advocating for abortion rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, anti-racism, and tech accountability.
The National Organization of Women and the Global Justice Center were among those that signed the memo.
The letter was signed and shared exclusively with Axios.
Activist groups questioned the failure of social media platforms to protect politicians by declaring that, "Social media companies are still failing to protect candidates, voters, and elected officials from disinformation, misogyny, racism, transphobia, and violence."
The letter requested that inaccurate information, hate speech, and threats against candidates and election officials be removed from platforms.
It also requested platforms to correct widespread abortion misinformation and direct consumers to trustworthy news sources.
Organizations also requested more restraint, transparency, and tech firms to deplatform fake news spreaders.
Tech Firms' Vulnerability and Misinformation Prevention
To influence the 2016 election, Russia reportedly used Instagram ads, which were seen by millions of Americans.
Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch, has revealed that a group of Russian actors created 120,000 election-related Instagram posts that were viewed by 16 million people.
According to Stretch, the company estimates that another 4 million people likely saw content from Russian accounts.
Meta announced it has a dedicated team to combat election and voter interference in the U.S. midterm elections.
It will also direct people searching for information about voting and the U.S. midterm elections to reputable sources of that information, helping to curb the spread of misinformation.
Surprisingly, humans, not bots, have been found to be the primary source of misleading information on Twitter.
The findings are based on a 2018 study of how news spreads on the microblogging site by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During the 2016 presidential election, Twitter users shared over 3 million false stories monthly, according to Science.
Following Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter acquisition, he tweeted his motivation for acquiring the platform to "Twitter's Advertisers."
Musk has stated that he will reverse Twitter's content moderation, reinstall some of its biggest election misinformation distributors, and fire up to 75% of the company's employees.
Confusion has risen concerning how his takeover will affect the U.S. midterm election strategy.
Twitter, on the other hand, activated its Civic Integrity Policy to combat election misinformation.
Moreover, 170 YouTube videos were flagged as false by a fact-checking organization between April 2019 and February 2021.
One experiment gathered a list of recommended videos after a person watched a video that was proven to be false by fact checkers. Three of the top ten recommended channels had mixed or low Media Bias/Fact Check factual reporting scores, and 18.4% of the recommended videos were misleading, according to his findings.
When viewers search for midterm videos, YouTube's policy to combat election misinformation includes highlighting credible news sources.
Misbar’s Sources
Axios
The Demand (Doc)
Scientific American
BBC
The Washington Post
Slate
Misbar
