Leading up to the 2020 election, online platforms were policing misinformation. Now, days before the election, social media companies are taking a more hands-off approach — particularly X.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There are lots of places to follow election results tomorrow. Your local public radio station is one. Another is social media. Many of the biggest platforms are more lenient about what people can say than during the last presidential election, and that makes misinformation researchers nervous about the spread of lies or even violence. NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn is here to tell us more. Hi, Bobby.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So how are social media companies preparing for the election?
ALLYN: Well, most of the big platforms say they’ll be vigilant for any voter interference attempts and false claims of victory. And this will be through a mix of automated systems and human moderators. Google and Meta also are limiting the time frame when advertisers can buy new election ads. So most of the major tech companies say they do have guardrails in place to combat election-related bad actors. But as you mentioned, social media researchers are very skeptical, and this is because they have been noticing companies backing off of commitments and enforcing policies less. And a lot has changed since the last presidential election in 2020.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about that. What’s changed?
ALLYN: Well, the most obvious change is Twitter, now X. Elon Musk has transformed the platform into a megaphone for the reelection of Donald Trump. And with that has come droves of MAGA fans and very few content rules that would otherwise have taken down false claims about the election. But elsewhere, Ari, other platforms have also become lax. Studies have shown that YouTube has backed off enforcing prior commitments to crack down on videos pushing the big lie, the false idea that the 2020 election was stolen. And many YouTube, TikTok and X provocateurs are going viral by seeding doubt about the 2024 result already. I talked to Marshall Van Alstyne about this. He studies social media at Boston University, and he’s really worried about platforms enabling election-related conspiracy theories.
MARSHALL VAN ALSTYNE: In some sense, they’re greasing the skids for violence or greasing the skids for conspiracy theories. I’m hoping it’s nothing of the same scale as what we observed on January 6, but we may be seeing some bad behavior ex post as people believe that their votes weren’t counted or that certain districts were stolen from them.
SHAPIRO: Is he talking about authentic posts by real social media users or paid ads or what?
ALLYN: Yeah, you know, really both ’cause ads have also been a problem. For instance, dark money groups have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook, pushing ads with just outright brazen lies, like that the election might be postponed or that Kamala Harris could drop out.
SHAPIRO: There was so much misinformation in the last couple presidential elections. Why would the rules be looser now than they were then?
ALLYN: Yeah, counter intuitive, isn’t it? It’s just really hard, Ari, to overstate just how much of a ripple effect Elon Musk’s X has had in terms of, you know, setting the tone for all the platforms. Researchers say X has become something of a free-for-all with, you know, very few consequences from Washington. And that has given other social media sites permission to just be looser with their rules. In fact, this tech reform group called The Free Press released a study just days ago, and it found that nearly all of the social media platforms are, quote, “backsliding on commitments they made in the wake of the 2020 election.” So that’s been concerning to social media researchers. And another concern, Ari, is the encrypted messaging app Telegram. We’re seeing very large groups there forming to discuss ways of questioning the outcome of the presidential election. And Telegram is another app known for its hand-off approach to content moderation. So, in short, be very careful on social media tomorrow and after the election.
SHAPIRO: Will do. NPR’s Bobby Allyn. Thank you.
ALLYN: Thanks, Ari.
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