The battle against disinformation during the US elections
Some months ago I wrote this piece about the steps Facebook was taking to battle misinformation during the rise of the Coronavirus pandemic.
One of the main conclusions that we learnt during that time is that Facebook (and other major tech companies) were able to quickly implement measures that helped to tackle, at least part of, the misinformation problems on their online platforms.
Back to the present, almost 7 months later, two things are clear: first, the new Covid-19 has come to stay with us for a while. Second, society needs to learn how to simultaneously handle other problems at the same time. The hard truth is that, even with our minds constantly drifting to the Corona situation, we still have other stuff to care about, and we can’t allow ourselves to forget about some of it (as hard as it can get).
One of the examples of “things that need immediate attention now” has been the recent US Elections. As you probably know already, after long days of counting votes in several states, Joe Biden has won the presidency of the United States. He has at the moment 290 electoral college votes forecasted for him next December 14, when these colleges will issue the final vote (check here for an explanation on how the system works).
However, and as if 2020 couldn’t let the opportunity to make things even harder, Trump has spent every single minute after election day publicly denouncing a “voter fraud”, of which he has no proof whatsoever, and proclaimed himself as the real winner. It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the technicalities behind this since most popular media channels already offer deep explanations on why this is simply not true (please check the following links if you are interested: 1, 2, 3).
Nonetheless, it’s interesting to point out how big social media platforms have made a bigger and more visible effort to tackle this situation. This is not a casual movement, and it is the “logical” consequence of several previous factors that have put the Big Tech in a position where this was the smartest choice to make.
In the first place, the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal has put social media platforms in the focus of political inquiries during the last 4 years, with both parties showing big signs of concern. Democrats focused more on political misinformation spread and Republicans on “speech censorship” (both views highly motivated by their political agendas and what they were trying to achieve in this next election cycle).
Secondly, Trump has been giving clues that he was going to behave like this for the last months, sometimes more implicitly, others kind of directly expressing his intentions. This fit into an overall picture where Democrats were encouraging people to vote by mail to help contain the spread of the pandemic (also historically more Democrats choose this option) and Republicans were calling their supporters to show up in person on Election Day. Precisely because of this, big figures in the media and the Democratic Party (like Bernie Sanders) were also foreseeing this unfolding.
Thirdly, big social media companies are under a lot of political pressure, not only in the US but also in Europe. One could argue is not enough (and I would definitely agree), but it is certainly the most in their short life history and it will probably increase in the coming future.
Lastly, the Coronavirus pandemic has put the world, and especially the US, in a really bad spot. With no strong and coordinated Federal Government response, they are one of the most affected countries globally and there is no sign of things getting better soon.
All these factors have put the Big Tech in a position where the wisest thing to do is not to allow any missteps or flashy mistakes. As I said at the beginning, the world is being forced to manage several problems at the same time, and probably no one can afford many more.
Consequently, and following a similar approach to what they are doing about Corona, all major tech companies have implemented new measures to deal with this election chaos.
Let’s go over some of the main ones:
1. Contrary to past decisions, banning or restricting political ads in their platforms.
2. Providing a “voting information centre” with updated info and making it easily accessible for people.
Moreover, they sometimes offered a highlighted section for “swing states”, visually stating the percentage of vote counting for each of them.
3. Establishing, with a clear and concise vocabulary, that the race was not called yet, and offering explanations on how the process works.
4. Indicating if the results were over or not in any post or content related to the elections.
5. Calling out misinformation posts, even those created by Trump himself, and offering official and updated info to users.
All these efforts, aligned with those made by traditional media outlets, have created a scenario where, at least, no one is blaming this post-election chaos on social media platforms yet, contrary to what we saw in 2016. However, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t worry.
Apart from what future analysis of this time will uncover, we can see how the battle against US Elections misinformation (misleading) and disinformation (conscious lie) is still happening on many different levels and platforms.
At the moment, Facebook is fighting to stop it in private and public groups, as well as trying to manage election based conspiracy theories.
Twitter is preparing to stop giving Trump a special treatment after he leaves office in January, which would allow them to ban him, and not only hide or label his tweets if he continues infringing the platform rules.
Google is still being criticized for not taking down some YouTube videos where Trump falsely proclaims himself as the presidential race winner.
What we now know for sure is that, even though the situation is still chaotic, the measures undertaken by these companies have probably helped to minimize a bit what could have otherwise been an even more harmful and distopian situation.
However, it is important to have in mind that the effectiveness of these actions has in all likelihood been undermined by the lack of any regulated standards on how to tackle these situations.
Remember that it has been the Big Tech themselves, the ones deciding and self-assessing their course of action. This has ended up in different approaches being taken in some issues and no actual way of accurately auditing the success of their actions by external parties (such as governmental, media or academic institutions).
Once again, this leaves an open door for future debate on an increased governmental regulation on these kinds of issues, always having in mind that this shouldn’t be considered the single panacea for fixing a political polarization problem that is also rooted in many other socio-economic factors that have little to do with social media disinformation.
👉 Please note that this article represents my current views on several topics, which can change in the future depending on many different factors. That’s how I believe critical thinking should work and one of the bases of my work.
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