With The Facebook Papers adding daily to the evidence of the inability and unwillingness of social media giants to combat disinformation and other harmful content, Common Cause today released an extensive report on election disinformation, including a comprehensive set of reforms needed to curb this huge and growing problem and protect our right to vote in elections next week, next year, and beyond. Based on more than 15,000 hours monitoring social media in the 2020 election cycle, together with legal and policy expertise, “De hecho: los daños causados por la desinformación electoral” details the seriousness and scale of the threat, current applicable state and federal laws, and the woefully inadequate and inconsistent civic integrity policies of the social media giants. The report concludes with a sweeping series of reform recommendations to better enable us to fight back against election disinformation.

“In America, we expect and deserve clean elections but Facebook and other social media giants have largely failed in their duty to identify and remove election disinformation from their platforms. It is time for more regulation and outside oversight before these companies allow still more damage to be done to Americans’ faith in our elections,” dicho Karen Hobert Flynn, presidenta de Causa Común. “The social media companies are not the only culprits here, but they have to varying degrees stood by while The Big Lie has gained momentum on their platforms. Today, roughly 1 in 3 Americans—and nearly two-thirds of Republicans—wrongly believe the 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen from Trump.’ Those lies, which flourished on social media, ultimately fueled the January 6 insurrection.”

The report provides an overview of election disinformation, explaining what it is, how it’s being spread, and who is spreading it. It identifies the most common forms of election disinformation to include communications providing the wrong election date, bogus election rules, voter intimidation, untrue claims about election integrity or security, and untrue claims post-election about results. It finds most common vehicles for disseminating disinformation include social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, junk websites, mainstream media like Fox News, search engines like Google, as well as email, text messages, and robocalls.

“Common Cause staff, disinformation analysts, and thousands of volunteers have been on the front lines fighting election disinformation and we have witnessed firsthand its explosion on social media in recent years,” dicho Jesse Littlewood, Common Cause Vice President for Campaigns. “We have also seen and documented the social media companies’ failures in their public commitment to prevent the spread of disinformation about elections – failures echoed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The current state of affairs is nothing short of dangerous and the time is now for comprehensive reforms.”  

The report goes on to detail current federal and state laws regulating election disinformation—voting rights, campaign finance, communications, consumer protection, media literacy, and privacy laws—and the shortcomings of current laws. It then examines the civic integrity policies of some of the largest social media companies, the policies Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have put in place to address abuses of their platforms for the dissemination of election disinformation. Those policies, the report shows, have proven insufficient and ineffective in combatting the very serious threat of election disinformation.

“The time to act is now before any more damage is done and our actions must be sweeping in order to combat the dire threat of election disinformation,” said Yosef Getachew, Common Cause Media and Democracy Program Director. “The reforms must include changes to state and federal laws encompassing voting rights, campaign finance, privacy, media, as well reforms to federal and state executive and regulatory agencies. Social media companies must also take additional steps to strengthen their civic integrity policies and close loopholes that allow bad actors to spread harmful content.”

The report’s final section and primary focus is a series of state, federal and corporate reforms to help stem the flow of election disinformation that is undermining Americans’ faith in the nation’s elections. Reform recommendations detailed in the report include the following.

Las empresas de redes sociales deben fortalecer sus políticas para combatir el contenido diseñado para socavar nuestra democracia, incluso proporcionando a los usuarios información fidedigna sobre votaciones y elecciones, reduciendo la difusión y amplificación de la desinformación electoral y proporcionando una mayor transparencia en cuanto a sus políticas y prácticas de moderación de contenidos.

El Congreso y las legislaturas estatales deberían modificar las leyes sobre el derecho al voto para incluir explícitamente Prohibir la difusión intencional de información falsa sobre la hora, el lugar o la forma de las elecciones. o las calificaciones o restricciones a la elegibilidad de los votantes, con la intención de impedir la votación.

El Congreso y las legislaturas estatales deberían Actualizar las leyes de divulgación de financiación de campañas para la era digital, para incluir "pagado por” exenciones de responsabilidad sobre publicidad digital y disposiciones efectivas que arrojan luz sobre el dinero transferido entre grupos para evadir la divulgación.

El Congreso y las legislaturas estatales deberían Aprobar una legislación integral sobre privacidad de datos para proteger a los consumidores de la recopilación, uso y compartición abusiva de datos personales.

El Congreso debería Promulgar leyes que fortalezcan los medios de comunicación locales y proteger el acceso público a información de alta calidad sobre el gobierno, la seguridad pública, la salud pública, el desarrollo económico y la cultura local.

El Congreso debería Aprobar una legislación para proteger el acceso de los investigadores y periodistas de control a los datos de las redes sociales, lo que permite a los investigadores estudiar las prácticas de las plataformas de redes sociales sin temor a interferencias o represalias por parte de las empresas de redes sociales.

El Congreso debería Aprobar legislación para prohibir los algoritmos discriminatorios de las plataformas en línea y crear una mayor transparencia sobre cómo funcionan estos algoritmos.

La Casa Blanca y los gobernadores de los estados de todo el país deben desempeñar un papel de liderazgo en la lucha contra la desinformación electoral., incluso mediante la emisión de órdenes ejecutivas que ordenan a las agencias con autoridad para hacer cumplir la ley, establecer normas e investigar que utilicen estas capacidades para combatir la desinformación electoral.

To read the “As a Matter of Fact: The Harms Caused by Election Disinformation” report, haga clic aquí.