Corporate Accountability

On Tuesday, misinformation researchers tried to get Twitter’s attention to take down unproven rumors and lies. Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director of the pro-democracy advocacy group Common Cause, tweeted that “a few super spreaders have been spreading election disinformation narratives throughout the course of the day” and that “not only have these tweets not been removed but many have gone viral, potentially misleading and confusing voters.”

Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst at government transparency advocacy group Common Cause, said the new subscription service worsens pre-existing problems that owe to the trust engendered by the platform's verification model. "At Twitter, there's been a long standing disparity between what Twitter says a check mark is for: Authenticity," Steiner told ABC News. "And what people interpret it as: Authority." "The new policy makes this division more confusing," she added.

The nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause, which monitors social media for voter suppression efforts, said that Twitter took no action on high-profile posts that the organization flagged on Tuesday as problematic. Common Cause said Twitter posts from Republican candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake should have included warning labels under the company's civic integrity policy, which governs misleading tweets about elections. Posts by Greene and Lake drew tens of thousands of likes and retweets on Twitter. Common Cause also noted a "big slowdown" in Twitter's response time since Friday, when layoffs gutted many of the company's teams responsible for elevating credible information. "Twitter is hopeless and not responding beyond replying that they are looking into something and then going dark on it for days," the group said, noting that the company's response time was normally about one to three hours. Also drawing engagement were posts baselessly warning voters that Wi-Fi networks at polling locations could enable hacking of voting machines, Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause, told a news briefing. The falsehoods appeared to originate on messaging app Telegram before spreading to more mainstream social media services, according to Common Cause. A Reuters review found examples on Twitter, TikTok and Meta's (META.O) Facebook.

Common Cause, a pro-democracy advocacy group, said this week that it had flagged several tweets pushing false narratives, such as that election results not announced on Tuesday night are a sign of fraud. The group said that “it has taken Twitter much longer than normal to adjudicate” whether the posts violated its policies, a process that usually takes less than three hours but was unresolved after more than three days.

Researchers tracking misinformation ahead of the midterms notified Twitter on Friday about three posts from well-known far-right figures that advanced debunked claims about election fraud. The posts remain up three days later. When Common Cause asked Twitter for an update on Monday, the platform said the posts were “under review.” Before Musk took over, Twitter responded much more quickly, said Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause. The group said they had been in regular contact with Twitter staff before Musk took over. Now, they are getting a response from a generic email address. “We had been getting much faster decisions from them, sometimes within hours,” said Littlewood. Now, he said, “It’s like pushing the button for the walk sign at the stop light, and nothing is happening.”

Yosef Getachew, director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, said there’s a significant risk that misinformation spreading so soon before the election could confuse or frighten voters, or lead to more polarization or even acts of violence. “Rather than cave in to conspiracy theorists and propaganda peddlers, we urge Musk to ensure Twitter’s rules and enforcement practices reflect our values of democracy and public safety,” Getachew said.