This past week, Twitter introduced a new way to report tweets, as posts that include misinformation regarding an election can now be flagged. Twitter's Director of Public Policy, Carlos Mojne, said this was done to keep the conversations healthy and to prevent any content that can discourage or confuse voters. Twitter took similar measures in India and the UK when they held federal elections last year.
The new reporting feature, second from the bottom, as well as some of the reasons why a post can be considered misleading about an election.
This implementation follows Twitter's decision to ban all political advertising on the app, regardless of how true or false it is. Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey stated that he doesn't want the money of politicians to optimize the feed of voters, and would prefer that they do a better job at messaging instead.
These decisions have mostly been applauded by users, who haven't been afraid to criticize Twitter and its CEO. Jack, as he's known by on his Twitter handle, has faced criticism for his hesitancy towards banning the accounts of Nazis and other far-right content in the United States, especially because he already complies with EU laws to ban those users in Europe. In addition, the reporting system has also faced scrutiny, as users complain that racist, sexist, and other threatening content is not properly dealt with. For Jack to finally be on the receiving end of some positive words shows that he is doing the right thing here.
Although there haven't been complaints about it yet, there will likely be some backlash soonover misleading election content not getting removed, especially because primary season has already begun. In addition, there is controversy with how the political ad ban is being implemented, as companies like Exxon Mobil can still advocate for their political stances without being banned. Regardless of how it's implemented, Twitter has at least taken the steps necessary to prevent fake news from dominating the election, taking a totally different direction from Facebook.
Over the past few months, Facebook has reiterated that they will not ban political ads, even if the information in them is totally false. Mark Zuckerberg has stated that people should still be able to hear of what a candidate has to say, and they can debate the merits on it themselves. This line of thinking is flawed, as Facebook itself has found efforts to meddle in both past and upcoming elections, so it should not be allowing for politicians to advertise themselves unchecked.
The idea of how to properly handle campaign ads on social media is not perfectly clear, but Twitter definitely has a better idea of how to handle them than Facebook. Although their position on a total ban on these kinds of ads is interesting, I honestly disagree to an extent. Campaigns promoting themselves on social media is a great way for audiences to get to know them, and even if the user feed gets optimized towards a specific candidate, that's more of an issue on optimization rather than someone actually liking a politician. A lot more people are using the internet and social media rather than watching television nowadays, so turning there is definitely the smarter move for a campaign. In addition, I do believe that ads should be run on social media, albeit with proper fact-checking before they are promoted.
The issue with misinformation on social media is how fast it spreads. If someone with only 12 followers posts a misleading tweet, that probably won't have any impact; if that tweet is retweeted by the President, reporting it won't stop millions of people from seeing it. Some people may recognize a post for being false, while others may carry doubts, but many will still come to believe it. If Twitter wants to get serious about stopping election misinformation, it should create a team specifically to monitor that. If it can be reported in a fast and timely manner, many people will be saved from believing a lie. However, if it carries on and takes days to report, then it might be too late on a certain issue.
Twitter has a chance to do a better job this time around, and they have been taking the steps necessary to prevent misinformation. However, if they don't keep a sharp focus on this issue, all their good intentions may be for nothing.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/480728-twitter-rolls-out-feature-letting-users-report-election-misinformation
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