PolitiFact/Poynter: How will social media platforms respond to election misinformation? It isn’t clear

Online misinformation about the 2020 election drove all sorts of real-world consequences, from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to the then-president of the United States getting banned from Twitter.

Those false claims that the last election was stolen haven’t gone away. Instead, they’re driving new campaign messaging for the 2022 midterm races through ads, videos and misleading memes.

As we reviewed the rules for false claims about elections and voting on social media, we found that determining what gets removed, what gets labeled and what gets downgraded isn’t straightforward. Every platform is different, and their policies aren’t always clearly outlined. Even when policies are clear, platforms may still shift them quickly without making the changes obvious to users. …

In January, Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby told CNN that Twitter has stopped enforcing the civic integrity policy — its rules about using the platform to interfere in elections, the census or referendums — as it pertains to the 2020 election, because that election is over.

This decision may have consequences for voters in 2022, said Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group. (Common Cause supports PolitiFact’s Spanish fact-checking in 2022.)

Many people still believe the 2020 election was stolen, and candidates have been sharing that message. “By not combating this, they’re helping fuel the narrative that this big lie was accurate, when it’s not,” said Getachew.

Emma Steiner, a disinformation researcher at Common Cause, said she still sees unmarked tweets falsely claiming that mail ballot drop boxes aren’t safe. (Drop boxes are secure boxes, often placed outside polling sites or government buildings, into which voters can drop completed ballots received by mail. The boxes often have more security features than standard mailboxes and have been used in some jurisdictions for decades).

Platforms don’t share data proactively, Steiner said, so it’s hard to gauge exactly how many posts with election-related falsehoods get sent around. It took PolitiFact about 30 seconds in the Twitter search tool — trying terms like “ballot mules” and “dead voters” — to find multiple false claims about elections. …

Getachew has concerns about how platforms decide what is and isn’t newsworthy. He says Facebook and Twitter decide it case by case, so it’s hard for the public or politicians to know what they can and cannot post.  …

Those who watch the platforms closely say they seem to see enforcement of misinformation rules before and during elections but less so once elections are over. That creates inconsistency.

“It just keeps raising the question of, ‘Why is there an off-period for civic integrity policies?’” said Steiner

Common Cause and 130 other public interest organizations — including the NAACP, Greenpeace, and the League of Women Voters — sent a letter in May asking platforms to limit election misinformation proactively in 2022. Their recommendations include auditing algorithms that look for disinformation, downranking known falsehoods, creating full-time civic integrity teams, ensuring policies are applied retroactively — i.e., to content posted before the rule was instituted — moderating live content, sharing data with researchers and creating transparency reports on enforcement’s effectiveness. (Common Cause has contributed to PolitiFact for fact-checking of election misinformation.)

Getachew says platforms haven’t responded to much to the letter, although Facebook confirmed receipt and gave a noncommittal response. He said Common Cause continues to have internal conversations with the company.

The platforms are making some internal changes. Last year, Twitter launched Birdwatch, a pilot program that lets users create contextualizing “notes” for potentially misleading tweets. Other users then rate the notes, based on their helpfulness.

Common Cause is also advocating for the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which would decrease the amount of data social media companies can collect about users, meaning those users would receive less individualized feeds. The bill passed committee and was sent to the House floor July 20.