Fears about midterm election disinformation have led both Meta and TikTok to outline the defensive measures they plan to deploy. It follows a disastrous experience in 2016, when Facebook unwittingly sold political ad space to disinformation agents working on behalf of Russia.
Meta subsequently put in place protections for the 2020 elections, and says that it will maintain the strategies shown to be effective, as well as improving on them …
Background
Facebook came in for a massive amount of criticism during and after the 2016 presidential election campaign when it sold political ad space without any fact-checking, and without verifying the identities of the entities paying for the ads.
A subsequent Department of Justice investigation found that a substantial number of social media ads and posts contained deliberate disinformation posted by agents acting for the Russian state.
As set forth in detail in this report, the Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations.
First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents.
The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
Facebook subsequently acknowledged its role in this, and put in place protections during the 2020 election campaign. These included verifying the identity of all organizations placing political ads, but did not include fact-checking any of the claims in them.
Plans to fight midterm election disinformation
Bloomberg reports that Facebook owner Meta will employ similar measures to those used in 2020.
After years of revising and updating its election strategy, Meta Platforms Inc. is pulling out a familiar playbook for the US midterms, sticking with many of the same tactics it used during the 2020 general election to handle political ads and fight misinformation.
That largely means focusing on scrubbing misinformation about voting logistics and restricting any new political ads in the week prior to Election Day [and removing] posts that mislead people on where, when and how to vote, or that call for violence based on the voting or election outcome, according to a statement Tuesday. Ads that push people not to vote or that question the legitimacy of an election will be removed.
The company is also employing 10 independent fact-checking partners, and will label misleading posts. However, the above exceptions aside, the company will not remove misleading posts, nor will it fact-check political ads.
TechCrunch reports that TikTok has also shared its own plans, which go further than those of Meta. TikTok is completely banning political ads, and extending this ban to sponsored content.
That means a political action committee could not work around TikTok policies to instead pay a creator to make a TikTok video advocating for their political position, the company claims.
The company says that it will also remove the same sort of content as Meta, but will go further in closing accounts and blocking devices where appropriate.
TikTok says it will monitor for content that violates its guidelines. This includes misinformation about how to vote, harassment of election workers, harmful deep fakes of candidates and incitement to violence.
Depending on the violation, TikTok may remove the content or the user’s account, or ban the device. In addition, TikTok may choose to redirect search terms or hashtags to its community guidelines, as it did during the prior election cycle for the hashtags associated with terms like “stop the steal” or “sharpiegate,” among others.
TikTok’s neutral Elections Center goes live today.
The new feature will allow users to access state-by-state election information, including details on how to register to vote, how to vote by mail, how to find your polling place and more, provided by TikTok partner NASS (the National Association of Secretaries of State).
TikTok also newly partnered with Ballotpedia to allow users to see who’s on their ballot, and is working with various voting assistance programs — including the Center for Democracy in Deaf America (for deaf voters), the Federal Voting Assistance Program (overseas voting), the Campus Vote Project (students) and Restore Your Vote (people with past convictions) — to provide content for specific groups.
The AP will continue to provide the latest election results in the Elections Center.
Apple has not yet announced its own plans for the midterms, but created extensive election coverage for the 2020 presidential election.
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