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It's US election day. Hard to miss it, frankly. Just a reminder that w/ all that social media companies have done to prepare (and it's a lot), @Facebook, @Google & @Twitter are still losing the battle against election misinformation https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/04/silicon-valley-election-misinformation-383092 https://twitter.com/markscott82/status/1323349752847732737
Why is that, I hear you ask? Well, to be fair to the companies, they've made it a lot harder for foreign groups & outright lies to spread online. But Russia is still hanging about, and domestic groups have got a lot more sophisticated in their tactics https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/russia-cyberattacks-election-413757
And it doesn't even have to be underhanded efforts. There are still 100 different ways for groups to dodge the companies' rules to target voters w/ political messages while concealing their intentions. Look, I found one https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/union-group-spending-facebook-swingstates-433457
And if you're just looking to make a few $$ from the partisan mess that is the US electoral system (sigh), that's still pretty easy, too. Again, I found one -- a dude in NY state running both pro-Biden & pro-Trump FB pages w/ massive reach https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/10/16/linked-facebook-pages-stoke-both-sides-of-political-divide-1326333
But let's be clear. This is not a US-only issue (reminder: Myanmar election is on Nov. 8). Almost all govt-led efforts to clamp down on (state-backed) misinformation have mostly failed. Here's why https://www.politico.eu/article/misinformation-disinformation-uk-general-election-canada-facebook/
And even when countries know there's a problem -- and regulators have called for changes -- nothing changes. (Looking at you, UK, with the copious amounts of evidence that things have gone seriously wrong) https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-general-election-facebook-misinformation-boris-johnson-interference-russia/
There are some, say Sweden, who actually have done a good job a preparing for a coordinated govt response (they are already working on how to defend the 2022 election). Ditto in Canada which had arguably the best approach to this stuff https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/canada-foreign-election-meddling-1698209
But, getting back to the US, it's election day, and taking a quick look through CrowdTangle this morning, and there's misinformation everywhere -- about the candidates, about the issues and what may or may not happen later this week.
Before you ask, I'm not going to give specifics here 1) because I don't want to amplify stuff & 2) Twitter has actually been pretty good at stopping this stuff from spreading, so my tweet may actually get flagged. Though I'm just going to leave this here https://twitter.com/markscott82/status/1321809974004195331?s=20
You're going to hear a lot about social media companies "censoring" conservative voices, or liberals claiming the companies aren't doing enough to take stuff down. At least around voter fraud & black lives matter, conservative voices prevail. Stats here https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643
So giddy up for bumpy ride this week. I do hope I'm too cynical and that things will go better than planned. Though I am already seeing Russian media promote voter fraud narratives (they've been doing that for years), and even Chinese are chipping in w/ "US is doomed" chatter
