By: Joleen Traynor
With the presidential election fast approaching, voters and pundits alike are increasingly concerned about the integrity of our election systems. Outside groups have attempted to infiltrate our election systems in the 2016 election cycle[1], and the United States could be at risk again in the 2020 cycle. This concern grows by the day as we near election day. This comes after Microsoft recently issued a warning outlining a number of foreign governments, including Russia, China and Iran, that have attempted to access secure campaign data from both President Trump and Joe Biden’s campaigns.[2] Social media also has an increasing role to play in election security, and in ensuring that only verifiable, accurate information is presented to the public. However, exactly how this information is presented to the public is up for debate, and each platform is taking its own approach to how it plans to treat unverifiable information.
This begs the question: what role does social media have to play in securing our election system? Foreign adversaries often rely on artificial intelligence, often referred to as “bots” to disseminate misleading or false information online. A “bot” is “a computer that attempts to talk to humans through technology that was designed for humans to talk to humans.”[3] In fact, “researchers determined that bots accounted for roughly 25 percent of tweets concerning the 2016 presidential election.”[4]
Some platforms, like Twitter, are attempting to balance access to information, and ensuring that the information that is circulated is legitimate, seen in Twitter’s policy of suspending certain accounts for inappropriate behavior, in many instances these suspended accounts are “bots”, and are not actual people sharing links and information.[5] Another social media platform, Facebook, overhauled its advertising policy after the 2016 election.[6] Looking ahead, “Twitter said it plans to more aggressively label or remove election-related tweets that include disputed or misleading information, while Google said it would screen more auto-complete suggestions to avoid voters being misled.”[7] Are these actions sufficient?
Regarding the 2020 presidential election cycle, substantive steps are already being taken to appropriately label posts and information given by President Trump’s campaign team. Both Twitter and Facebook have issued warning labels for tweets and posts from President Trump’s official channels, however the posts have not been removed.[8] These actions provide a warning to followers and readers that the posts may contain inaccurate information, and it may encourage readers to independently verify information for themselves. These are valid and important steps that social media platforms are taking in order to better inform the public, but is it enough to stop unverifiable information and false news from spreading online? These are questions that can only be answered in the days and weeks after election day.
[1] See generally 2016 Presidential Campaign Hacking Fast Facts, CNN (Oct. 31, 2019, 1:10 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/us/2016-presidential-campaign-hacking-fast-facts/index.html.
[2] David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties, N.Y. Times (Sept. 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/us/politics/russian-hacking-microsoft-biden-trump.html.
[3] Siobhan Roberts, Who’s a Bot? Who’s Not?, N.Y. Times (June 16, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/science/social-media-bots-kazemi.html.
[4] Ashley Fox, Automated Political Speech: Regulating Social Media Bots in the Political Sphere, 18 First Amend. L. Rev. 114, 117 (2020).
[5] Brice C. Barnard, The Tweet Stops Here: How Politicians Must Address Emerging Freedom of Speech Issues in Social Media, 88 UMKC L. Rev. 1019, 1033 (2020).
[6] Alex Rochefort, Regulating Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Policy Analysis, 25 Comm. L. & Pol’y 225, 237 (2020).
[7] Emily Glazer and Kirsten Grind, Google and Twitter Sharpen Tools to Stop False Claims About Election, Wall St. J. (Sept. 10, 2020, 4:11 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-to-label-remove-more-election-related-tweets-with-misleading-information-11599757200?mod=tech_lead_pos7.
[8] Brian Fung and Paul P. Murphy, Facebook and Twitter put warning label on Trump’s posts on voting twice, CNN (Sept. 12, 2020, 2:39 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/12/politics/twitter-facebook-trump-north-carolina/index.html.
Image Source: https://www.texomashomepage.com/news/national-news/social-media-giants-testified-on-capitol-hill-addressing-their-role-in-online-extremism/