Newsy (VIDEO): Experts: Social Platforms Are Unprepared For Election Misinformation

With just about four months until the 2022 midterm elections, misinformation experts, civil rights advocates and researchers are worried that social media companies are unprepared to deal with a potential onslaught of falsehoods about the election.

Many policies were put in place before and during the 2020 presidential election, but those policies haven’t cut down all of the misinformation, and in some cases, have been revoked. …

For instance, more than 100 Republican primary winners in statewide or Congressional races have backed the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, with many doing so online, according to the Washington Post. Additionally, The New York Times found that the film “2,000 Mules,” which falsely claims the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, had more than 430,000 interactions on Facebook and Instagram by June.

What’s more, these online narratives are bleeding into the real world. An NPR investigation found that since the Jan. 6 insurrection, four prominent election denialists have held more than 308 events, often small and at the grassroots-level, across 45 states and the District of Columbia. …

Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, helped author a letter from more than 120 civil society groups to seven major social media companies, noting that “disinformation related to the 2020 election has not gone away but has continued to proliferate.” The letter’s demands included consistent enforcement of civic integrity policies during both election and non-election cycles and the prioritization of enforcement around combatting what they call the big lie that says Trump won the 2020 election.

“A lot of the disinformation that we’re seeing now is really recycled content from the Big Lie, but it’s packaged in new ways that is getting more and more attention,” Getachew said. “When we’re talking about the 2022 election cycle, we’re seeing a lot of candidates now preemptively declare voter fraud, and this is based primarily off the Big Lie. A lot of candidates are using the Big Lie as a platform plank.”