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, “En fait : les dommages causés par la désinformation électorale” 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,” dit Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause President. “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,” dit 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.

Les réseaux sociaux doivent renforcer leurs politiques de lutte contre les contenus destinés à porter atteinte à notre démocratie, notamment en fournissant aux utilisateurs des informations faisant autorité concernant le vote et les élections, en réduisant la propagation et l’amplification de la désinformation électorale et en offrant une plus grande transparence concernant leurs politiques et pratiques de modération de contenu.

Le Congrès et les législatures des États devraient modifier les lois sur le droit de vote pour explicitement interdire la diffusion intentionnelle de fausses informations concernant la date, le lieu ou le mode des élections ou les qualifications ou restrictions relatives à l’éligibilité des électeurs, dans le but d’empêcher le vote.

Le Congrès et les législatures des États devraient mettre à jour les lois sur la divulgation du financement des campagnes électorales à l'ère numérique, pour inclure «des clauses de non-responsabilité « payé par » sur la publicité numérique et des dispositions efficaces mettant en lumière l’argent transféré entre les groupes pour échapper à la divulgation.

Le Congrès et les législatures des États devraient adopter une législation complète sur la protection des données pour protéger les consommateurs contre la collecte, l’utilisation et le partage abusifs de données personnelles.

Le Congrès devrait promulguer une législation renforçant les médias locaux et de protéger l’accès du public à des informations de qualité sur le gouvernement, la sécurité publique, la santé publique, le développement économique et la culture locale.

Le Congrès devrait adopter une loi pour protéger l'accès des chercheurs et des journalistes de surveillance aux données des réseaux sociaux, permettant aux chercheurs d’étudier les pratiques des plateformes de médias sociaux sans crainte d’interférence ou de représailles de la part des sociétés de médias sociaux.

Le Congrès devrait adopter une loi interdisant les algorithmes discriminatoires des plateformes en ligne et de créer une plus grande transparence sur la manière dont ces algorithmes fonctionnent.

La Maison Blanche et les gouverneurs des États du pays doivent jouer un rôle de premier plan dans la lutte contre la désinformation électorale., notamment en émettant des décrets ordonnant aux agences dotées de pouvoirs d’application de la loi, d’élaboration de règles et d’enquête d’utiliser ces capacités pour lutter contre la désinformation électorale.

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