Critics: Big Tech’s grip still too loose
Before the election, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube promised to clamp down on election misinformation, including unsubstantiated charges of fraud and premature declarations of victory by candidates. They mostly did just that, but with a few hiccups.
But their measures still didn’t address the problems exposed by the 2020 U.S. presidential contest, critics of the social platforms contend.
“We’re seeing exactly what we expected, which is not enough, especially in the case of Facebook,” said Shannon McGregor, an assistant professor of journalism and media at the University of North Carolina.
A test emerged early Wednesday morning as vote-counting continued in battleground states including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. President Donald Trump declared he would challenge the poll results. He also posted misleading statements about the election on Facebook and Twitter, following months of signaling his unfounded doubts about expanded mailin voting and his desire for final election results when polls closed on Nov. 3.
For the most part, tech companies did what they said they would do, which primarily meant labeling false or misleading election posts in order to point users to reliable information. In Twitter’s case, that sometimes meant obscuring the offending posts, forcing readers to click through warnings to see them. For Facebook and YouTube, it mostly meant attaching authoritative information to election-related posts.
“They’re just appending this little label to the president’s posts, but they’re appending those to any politician talking about the election,” said McGregor.
By late morning Wednesday, Trump was tweeting an unfounded complaint that his early lead in some states seemed to “magically disappear” as the night went on and more ballots were counted.
Twitter quickly slapped that with a warning that said “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” It was among at least three such warnings Twitter applied to Trump tweets Wednesday, which make it harder for viewers to see the posts without first reading the warning.
The actions were a step in the right direction, but not that effective – particularly in Twitter’s case, said Jennifer Grygiel, a professor at Syracuse University and social media expert.
That’s because tweets from major figures get instant traction, Grygiel said. So even though Twitter labeled Trump’s tweets about votes being cast after polls closed, by the time the label appeared, several minutes later, the misinformation had already spread.