It began with a simple blue label: \u201cGet the facts about mail-in ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, President Donald Trump tweeted allegations \u2014 shown time and again to be unfounded \u2014 that voting by mail leads to fraud. When Twitter, in accordance with its policies<\/a> on civic integrity and coronavirus misinformation, fact-checked and labeled the false claims, Trump threatened to shut social media companies down<\/a>.<\/p>\n Twitter subsequently hid one<\/a> of the president\u2019s tweets about ongoing protests against police brutality behind an interstitial warning on the grounds that it was glorifying violence. Trump then issued a muddled and largely unenforceable<\/a> executive order to muzzle social media companies. By Monday, Facebook had been drawn into the fray, with many employees staging a virtual walkout to protest the company\u2019s inaction on Trump\u2019s posts.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s social media posts are but the latest installment in a long, ugly history of voter suppression<\/a> and violence against protestors<\/a>, much of it targeting Black communities in the United States. Put together, the events of the past week bring into stark relief how social media has become a front in such attacks on democracy \u2014 and show how much more must be done to address digital disinformation.<\/p>\n A lot has been made of Twitter\u2019s decision to hide one of the president\u2019s tweets on the grounds that it glorifies violence. The tweet, which read, in part, \u201cwhen the looting starts, the shooting starts,\u201d referenced a phrase coined by<\/a> a Miami police chief known for his aggressive, racist policing policies in Black neighborhoods in the 1960s. Yet when Trump also tweeted that protestors were \u201cprofessionally managed<\/a>\u201d and \u201cANTIFA led anarchists<\/a>\u201d \u2014 spreading rumors that looting and rioting was being organized by antifa activists \u2014 neither post was labeled, hidden or removed. Facebook, meanwhile, chose not to take action on any of the posts, which were also placed on its network.<\/p>\n Similarly, Twitter\u2019s labeling of Trump\u2019s \u201cballot fraud\u201d disinformation is also a very new development. Last Tuesday\u2019s tweets marked the first time Twitter has fact-checked Trump \u2014 but it was far from the first time the president had peddled such claims. Just a week before, he tweeted<\/a> false information that the secretaries of state of Michigan and Nevada were engaging in illegal fraud when they tried to expand access to mail-in ballots, threatening to cut funding to those states. He also posted on Facebook that voting by mail would lead to \u201cmassive fraud and abuse<\/a>\u201d as well as \u201cthe end of our great Republican party,\u201d despite there being no link between voting by mail and fraud, nor any evidence<\/a> that mail-in ballots benefit either political party. At the time, neither Twitter nor Facebook took action.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s attempts to use digital disinformation to discredit voting by mail in the midst of a pandemic are especially concerning given his campaign\u2019s history with voter suppression. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, a senior Trump campaign official was quoted as saying<\/a> the organization had \u201cthree major voter suppression operations under way.\u201d As part of this, the campaign used \u201cdark posts\u201d on Facebook \u2014 posts only visible to certain users \u2014 to target Black voters in particular, encouraging them to stay home on Election Day (a tactic eerily echoed by Russian interference efforts<\/a> on social media). Going into the 2020 election, the Trump campaign and the Republican party are planning a massive campaign<\/a> to limit voting by mail; spreading disinformation about voter fraud in order to decrease trust in political processes is part and parcel of this strategy.<\/p>\n Twitter and Facebook\u2019s <\/a> policies on violence and civic participation go some way toward addressing these issues, on social media at least. Platforms<\/a> ban the glorification and incitement of violence, and both<\/a> platforms<\/a> ban communications that contain incorrect information about when, where and how to vote, as well as paid advertisements that discourage voting. However, these policies have typically been unevenly applied. While neither company had previously moderated posts by the president, Facebook in particular has drawn ire for explicitly exempting content by politicians from fact-checking. Its complete inaction on Trump\u2019s latest dangerous posts shows the instability of such policies, which led to the Monday walkout by Facebook employees and condemnation<\/a> from civil rights leaders.<\/p>\n Twitter and Facebook enacted their policies on civic engagement and violence in response to overwhelming public outcry over the effects of digital disinformation. No one, not even the President of the United States, should be exempt from them. Twitter took a small step toward acknowledging this by fact-checking and hiding the president\u2019s harmful tweets. In the future, however, both Twitter and Facebook need to consistently administer their policies, even \u2014 and perhaps, especially \u2014 when they apply to figures in power.<\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/GTuAHEAY4gE\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It began with a simple blue label: \u201cGet the facts about mail-in ballots.\u201d Last month, President Donald Trump tweeted allegations \u2014 shown time and again to be unfounded \u2014 that <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-19138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t