This week, Meta announced it will stop fact-checking Donald Trump after he announced his intention to run for President in 2024. In response, our affiliate Stewart Coles re-shared a 2020 CITAP whitepaper on the actions platforms can take to protect the vote. Its recommendations remain deeply relevant—and suggest why Meta’s new approach will cause real harm.
The whitepaper recommended that social media companies:
Enforce existing policies evenly, including against politicians
Clarify labeling, such as generic disclaimers like “Get Voting Information” (Facebook). Labels open into generalized information about voting, nothing that challenges claims in posts.
“Flood the Zone” with reliable content about voting
Provide resources to help trusted, official sources create social media content
Explicitly carving out a policy exception for a politician with an established record of sharing information that violates policies undermines those policies for everyone.
These recommendations build on CITAP’s research into social media platforms’ information policies, which we first published in 2020. In our 2022 update, Daniel Kreiss and Erik Brooks found that in a recent transparency statement Meta outlines a number of policies including:
Labeling misinformation
Removing violent content including “fake accounts and misinformation that may contribute to the risk of imminent violence or harm”
Employment of a third-party fact-checking program, which includes over 80 partners in over 60 languages.
But according to their website, politicians are not eligible for fact-checking because by “limiting political speech we would leave people less informed about what their elected officials are saying and leave politicians less accountable for their words.”
As Coles said, “Facebook could fact-check Trump and any other politician if they wanted to, they’re just choosing not to. When it is absolutely foreseeable that he will spread misinformation.”
Publications and appearances
“And the question remains — is that push to the polls as strong as disinformation and lies? I think the ability to connect to those lies is really a part of why they [have] become so powerful.” Francesca Tripodi spoke to CBS17 about Trump’s announcement and his supporters.
The Siegel Family Endowment introduced its 2022-2023 cohort of research fellows, including our very own Nanditha Narayanamoorthy!
“Pretty much every midterm is going to have less turnout or participation in most things, up to and including misinformation and interaction with online narratives.” Affiliate Morgan Wack spoke to PolitiFact about election vote counting and false election fraud claims.
Affiliate Rachel Moran has a new article out that analyzes the #SaveTheChildren posts on Instagram. It examines the motivations, tactics, and desired outcomes of the movement.
Affiliates Kirsten Eddy and Felix Simon appeared on SkepTechs podcast to discuss what they hope to see in future disinformation and media studies. They give a special shoutout to work by Alice Marwick, Daniel Kreiss, and other amazing scholars in the field.
Affiliate Daniel Johnson wrote an article for Slate on how Elon Musk’s Twitter will have negative implications for marginalized groups, activists, and others who use the site as an organizing tool.
Coming soon
December 1-5: Conference on Supremacism and Authoritarianism. Event information and registration.
December 2, 9am-5pm: The Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison holds its Election Symposium 2022. Shannon McGregor will be on the “Candidate TV Advertising and Social Media” panel.
Rest of Web
🎉 Congratulations to the Coalition for Independent Technology Research on their launch! We’re excited to support this work. Read the manifesto.