The 2020 election was awash in disinformation. It was practically uncontested. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were heavily used to spread disinformation. It was domestic, aimed at Latinos, and *crucially* it was in Spanish.

The vast majority of the anti disinformation work this past year has been focused on English. There simply hasn’t been the same attention and resources available to non English speaking communities.

Facebook is dealing with Qanon in Spanish which is linked to election disinfo

In general though, this is a complete failure. There is no excuse, newspapers have been writing about the problem for months. All that money and effort invested in countering disinformation but it is overwhelmingly English. 50+ million Spanish speakers had almost no protection

There were some teams, and some actions, and some people who talked about it... but the mainstream completely missed the flood of disinformation influencing people in Spanish speaking communities.

I don’t speak Spanish or read American media. It’s no excuse though. I fucked up

Congress was concerned about the high volume of disinfo in Florida targeting Latinos. This letter raises concerns about the surge in disinformation, asks whether it is from foreign threat actors (no, it isn’t), and demands to know what the FBI is going to do about it.

There is some suggestion that Colombia played a role in pushing disinformation into south Florida Latino communities. I’m super curious to see what that means. Foreign nations meddling in elections, a second time, and not even a near peer state. Colombia! https://www.wlrn.org/2020-09-22/is-colombia-interfering-in-the-u-s-election-in-florida-with-tactics-it-exported-to-florida