Elections: Facebook and Twitter face misinformation flood
Anticipating the potential for a rapid spread of misinformation as the November election nears, Twitter is making some of its most significant changes to date, said Shirin Ghaffary in Vox.com. The platform announced last week it is taking explicit steps to reduce the transmission of “viral” posts, first by directing users to a screen that will encourage them to add commentary before they can retweet another post. Another screen will provide credible information if a user tries to retweet a post that Twitter has identified as misleading. The company also plans to apply more aggressive “warning labels on misleading posts by politicians and accounts with more than 100,000 followers.” The moves are all about adding “friction,” or “nudging users to think twice before sharing misleading content.”
Facebook, too, has made election-minded changes, said Casey Newton in Platformer.news. The most proactive is banning political ads after polls close on Nov. 3. Most of the time, content moderation is “working to fix something after it has already broken.” But President Trump and his supporters “have given us advance notice of their intention” to declare fraud if he loses, and “we know giant pools of dark money are standing by to flood available channels with advertising insisting” that a coup is underway. Facebook has identified “the most obvious routes of attack” and taken action. It also deserves credit for moving aggressively to cull QAnon conspiracy theories. Ruling that QAnon is a “militarized social movement,” Facebook is now eliminating QAnon-linked pages and groups without waiting for them to directly advocate violence.
Just don’t think this is the end of conspiracy mongering on Facebook, said Kate Cox in ArsTechnica.com. On the contrary, some changes that Facebook has planned will “create even more fertile ground for the spread of extremism and misinformation.” Chief among them: Facebook has tweaked its algorithm to promote posts from groups that you’re not subscribed to but could be interested in—a formula for driving toxic viral content. Also, don’t expect Facebook to expand its limited ban on post-election political ads, said Ari Levy in CNBC.com. Most times, political ads account for only about 0.5 percent of the company’s revenue. But the rate of political spending has been much higher close to the election. In the third quarter, it made up 3 percent of Facebook’s revenue, and that is sure to grow.
The spending spree has included an anti-Trump Super PAC, Defeat by Tweet, that contrary to its name hasn’t spent a dollar on Twitter. Since Google recently “limited the ability for campaigns to target users,” and Twitter banned political ads altogether last year, Facebook is “the only game in town.”