Report: Social Media Still Boosts Election Fraud Claims

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Facts

  • A study from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released on Monday blames Meta, TikTok, Twitter, and Youtube for allegedly continuing to spread false claims surrounding election fraud in the 2020 US election.
  • The report faults the companies for an erosion in confidence of the democratic process by allegedly allowing election denialism to proliferate, and providing a platform for the controversial claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and that this fall’s midterms could also be fraudulent.
  • All the major platforms have announced plans to combat disinformation before the midterms, including Facebook’s intent to reject ads that encourage people not to vote or call the election’s legitimacy into question. But the report details how each company’s measures have so far been insufficient.
  • For example, Facebook exempts politicians from its fact-checking rules, Twitter has allegedly been lax in enforcing its civic integrity policy, TikTok allegedly inconsistently enforces its guidelines related to elections, and YouTube was found to remain vulnerable to disinformation through the posting of false videos.

Sources: Axios and New York Times.

Narratives

  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Daily Kos. This report simply reiterates what we already knew - social media powers haven’t done enough to stop the dangerous spread of election denialism. While the blame lies squarely with Republicans like Trump for initiating these lies, social media companies have a moral responsibility to prevent their proliferation, including by providing better fact-checking tools and the removal of content that’s obviously false.
  • Republican narrative, as provided by The Federalist. The real damage is being done by social media companies restricting free speech, not by them doing too little. But after colluding with Democrats in 2020 to suppress information they deemed fake or potentially harmful to then-candidate Biden’s campaign - such as the Hunter Biden laptop story - it looks like the powerhouses of social media are going to put their thumbs on the scales again to harm Republicans.