This, the politician claimed, was used to track people’s use of the wider internet as well as to monitor them logging into different Facebook accounts even if registered with different names. When senators last grilled Dorsey and Zuckerberg, the politicians were in full campaigning mode and it was a bit of a mess. Both of the chief executives said this would be hard to do, but they suggested one consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic was they would have more people working from home in the long-term, which in turn should entail greater diversity among their workforce. “I think that we really went quite far in terms of helping to distribute reliable and accurate information about the results.” “I believe we have taken some very significant steps in this area,” Mr Zuckerberg responded, pointing to information it had placed at the top of the screens of US-based Facebook and Instagram users. Senator Feinstein went on to ask Mr Zuckerberg if he felt enough had been done to prevent people delegitimising the election’s result.
Article Tags
“No you’re not. You’re putting up a page that says ‘voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the United States’. That’s not linking to a broader conversation. That’s taking a disputed policy position.” The Republican Senator Ted Cruz took a different tack, asking why Twitter was “putting purported warnings on virtually any statement about voter fraud”. She noted that hashtags for Steal The Vote and Voter Fraud had garnered more than 300,000 interactions on Facebook’s platforms in the hours after Mr Trump falsely declared victory. Democrats questioned whether steps taken to flag that President Trump’s claims of election fraud were “disputed” had gone far enough. Several Democrats grilled Zuckerberg on Facebook’s decision not to ban former White House advisor Steve Bannon after he called in a live-streamed video for the beheadings of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray.
Though some states allow for ballot counting to begin the moment ballots are received, others don’t start counting until polls close. Both CEOs assured the committee that they had programs in place to prevent misinformation aimed at discouraging people from voting in the Georgia race. The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook have stood by their handling of misinformation before and during the US presidential election. Lawmakers are concerned about further falsehoods during the Georgia Senate seat races. President-elect Biden has suggested the regulation should be “revoked” since it encourages the spread of falsehoods, and several of the Democratic senators at the latest hearing followed his lead.
How Well Did Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube Handle Election Misinformation?
It also will remove videos that misleads viewers about the voting process, encourages voter interference, or that have been manipulated to mislead viewers and poses a serious risk of harm. “While it’s too early to draw final conclusions, the behaviour we’ve seen so far from social media platforms and news media alike has been better than many feared. We can only hope that it stays this way while the outcome of the election hangs in the balance,” he said. Trump has often called out Facebook and Twitter for their labels on posts, claiming that the tech companies are censoring his campaign. Lawmakers emphasized the fact that the election was not over and that social media platforms would have to remain vigilant during the upcoming runoff races in Georgia for two Senate seats that will decide which party controls the chamber. “I think there’s Republican and Democratic concern about the power that’s being used by social media outlets to tell us what we can see and what we can’t, what’s true and what’s not,” the senator said. They said the social media companies were taking editorial decisions about what to take down, label or leave unaltered.
Misinformation following Election Day is a top concern among election security officials. Millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail this election because of the coronavirus pandemic, which means it’ll take longer than usual to count all the votes coming in. The delay in getting the results presents a ripe how twitter and facebook think they handled the election opportunity for misinformation on social networks, and it’ll be a critical test of how Facebook and Twitter react. Their decisions are bound to raise further questions about their role in controlling the information on their platforms.
Policy
- It takes longer to count absentee ballots than in-person ones, and any difficulties or delays could ultimately postpone election results by days or weeks, which could allow election misinformation and false claims of victory to go viral.
- Despite moves to limit the spread of Chinese propaganda on Facebook, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus that Facebook has not learned its lessons from the 2016 election cycle.
- Posts by individuals or organizations containing lies or incitements to violence will be subject to the same moderating process as always.
- In the months leading up to the election, in addition to updating content moderation policies, all three major social media platforms announced changes in advertising.
- Both companies said they wanted there to be more transparency, particularly around the way they moderate their platforms.
Twitter has highlighted its use of “prebunking,” the process of educating people about disinformation tactics, as an effective way of reducing the spread of misinformation. Social media companies have announced plans to deal with misinformation in the 2022 midterm elections, but the companies vary in their approaches and effectiveness. We asked experts on social media to grade how ready Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube are to handle the task. As we judge how social media handled the 2020 presidential election, though, we need a standard for success as well as failure. Election Day is here, and in the next few days or weeks, we’ll know who won — but for lots of people, tonight isn’t just about choosing the next president. It’s also a stress test for online platforms and a measure of how carefully they can handle information when the stakes are this high.
Roth mentioned a few, from a high-profile hack like Twitter saw in July to attempts by Russia and other countries to use the platform to spread misinformation. In the interim, Facebook is limiting the ability to find content with controversial hashtags, like #rigged or #sharpiegate. If you search for those terms, you’ll get a prompt that asks you to visit Facebook’s Voting Information Center.
Warnings About Vote-Count Delays
Facebook launched its Voting Information Center to push information sourced from state election officials and other nonpartisan civic organizations. Earlier in the fall, Twitter had established its election hub, which relies on users to pull authoritative information about the election. But during the election itself, Twitter started to push public service announcements—context in Trends and authoritative local information about voting and vote tabulations.
How Facebook Is Trying To Control Election Disinformation, Part 1
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Though it has taken some steps toward transparency, as seen in its Ad Library, it has a long way to go to win back consumer confidence and uphold its social responsibility. Overall, I believe that none of the platforms have addressed these issues very effectively.
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are all using a banner to warn users that results are still being counted, while YouTube will offer a fact-check panel and streams from authoritative sources. Facebook and Google are temporarily banning political ads after the election to prevent misinformation. Yesterday, Facebook and Twitter labeled (and in Twitter’s case, restricted) a misleading Trump tweet decrying a Supreme Court decision on mail-in voting. A massive number of voters are expected to vote by mail, at least partially driven by a desire to avoid contracting the coronavirus. It takes longer to count absentee ballots than in-person ones, and any difficulties or delays could ultimately postpone election results by days or weeks, which could allow election misinformation and false claims of victory to go viral. At the same time, social media firms face pressure from the left to more effectively police their platforms and outrage from the right over efforts to delete or slow the social spread of inaccurate information and conspiracy theories.
- Twitter and Facebook also said they are using both artificial intelligence and human review to stop harmful content from spreading widely.
- The platforms are already dealing with a lot of falsehoods and misleading posts about the election.
- Most famously, the claim that Sharpie pens vitiated Arizona ballots circulated widely even after being debunked by state officials.
- Tweets that claim victory before all the results are in will be labeled for misinformation.
- Both CEOs assured the committee that they had programs in place to prevent misinformation aimed at discouraging people from voting in the Georgia race.
Means I still have a soft spot for tech policy; Congressional hearings can sometimes be as entertaining as a Bravo reality show, for better or worse. But PCMag is all about the technology we use every day, as well as keeping an eye out for the trends that will shape the industry in the years ahead (or flop on arrival). I’ve covered the rise of social media, the iOS vs. Android wars, the cord-cutting revolution that’s now left us with hefty streaming bills, and the effort to stuff artificial intelligence into every product you could imagine. This job has taken me to CES in Vegas (one too many times), IFA in Berlin, and MWC in Barcelona. I also drove a Tesla 1,000 miles out west as part of our Best Mobile Networks project. Of late, my focus is on our hard-working team of reporters at PCMag, guiding and editing their robust coverage of satellite internet efforts, electric vehicles, the latest cyberattacks, AI, and more.
The announcement comes after Facebook deleted a “Stop the Steal” page that was organizing protests at vote-counting locations around the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. Twitter users are also now prompted when they are about to amplify misinformation before they are able retweet a flagged tweet. Google is aiming to provide users with quick reliable information on the election results with help from partners. “They’ve been pretty consistent along the lines we expected, which is to say — not great,” she said. Aleksi Knuutila, an anthropologist and data scientist at the Oxford Internet Institute, said that just because Trump’s tweets can’t spread on Twitter, doesn’t mean they aren’t spread elsewhere. Three out of four experts Business Insider spoke to pointed out that Twitter took the extra step of not only labelling Trump’s tweets, but also placing restrictions on how they could be shared.
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube—in that order—seem to have accepted the fact that they are media companies with responsibilities and experimented with promising injections of friction, signal boost, and policies. But the fires that were allowed to spread—and continue to blaze—suggest more needs to be done as a pandemic continues and civic trust sags after a bruising election. Twitter and Facebook had pre-committed to label posts with premature declarations of victory. Facebook included links to the Bipartisan Policy Center, without actually contradicting the posts. Using the same label on truths, half-truths, and lies is what media critic Jay Rosen calls the “view from nowhere.” It’s a bothsidesism in labeling that saps the intervention of any meaning.
In Brazil, for example, sharing YouTube videos on the messaging app Telegram has become a popular way to spread misinformation related to elections. This suggests that YouTube may be vulnerable to organized election-related disinformation in the U.S. as well. Some recent research suggests misinformation is often driven by traditional media, politicians, and other “elite” actors. Trump, among other things, massively amplifies conspiracy theories by retweeting small accounts that espouse them. During election night, plenty of accounts will probably post false and potentially rule-breaking claims.