Major social media platforms have policies that prohibit spreading falsehoods about elections. But their enforcement of these policies varies and is hard to track.
Some platforms have newsworthiness or public-interest exceptions that allow high-profile users to ignore guidelines.
Advocates are calling for platforms to take proactive steps to limit election misinformation and haven’t been satisfied with the response. Misinformation is still evident across the major platforms.
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.
"One of the things that we see is sometimes platforms go into an election with particular policies, and then a new and novel tactic or dynamic emerges that they didn’t necessarily have a policy for,'' said Renne DiResta,...
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