The gatekeepers of election intelligence

With just over two weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election, Carah Ong Whaley isn’t impressed with the how of  social media companies are moderating users' feeds.

“None of them are doing what needs to be done to ensure that false election information doesn’t spread,” Whaley said. Specifically, she worries about claims that non-citizens regularly vote in U.S. elections, or that U.S. ballots from overseas could be hijacked to sway the election. Both theories are not well-supported by evidence, she says. As vice president of election protection for the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization Issue One, she wants to educate voters about how U.S. elections work.

But while some argue for the righteous termination of junk info, others are more concerned about protecting free speech. Meanwhile, the moderation policies of social media giants have been morphing. 

Where’s the evidence? 

A poll from The Center Square recently indicated that most Americans are concerned about social media companies censoring election information. But Whaley is concerned about the opposite scenario: That social media companies might not be doing enough to counter the spread of false information. 

Experts have found no evidence that non-citizens regularly vote in U.S. elections, Whaley explained. Groups concerned about the possibility of non-citizen voting have not provided substantial evidence that it is a widespread practice, Whaley said. As for Democrats using overseas ballots to sway the election, Whaley says it’s nonsense. Her organization wants to help people access the real laws and official policies on the books in each state. However, well-meant misinformation—and even propaganda from bad actors in other countries—are just a thumb swipe away.

Moderating in moderation

Much of Issue One’s work seeks to counter the spread of false information online about election integrity, noncitizen voting, and other matters. Most of that information—false or otherwise—spreads over social media. And most social media platforms have adjusted their moderation policies over the last couple of years. 

Consider the platform with a new name. In late 2022, billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media company Twitter. In addition to rechristening the platform “X,” Musk eliminated the company’s previous policies allowing users to report potentially inaccurate information about elections, according to the group Reset Australia. Musk has repeatedly argued the platform’s primary obligation is to uphold freedom of speech. X’s current CEO, Linda Yaccarino, opined in a blog post on the company’s website about the need for what she called information independence. She insisted that instead of gatekeeping and monitoring content, social media ought to provide a platform where users can share their views and where community members point out whether information is accurate or inaccurate.

Meanwhile last year, YouTube changed its content moderation policies regarding election-related information. Before June 2, 2023, the video-sharing platform pledged to take down content questioning candidates’ eligibility, whispering of widespread voter fraud, or denying election results. But starting on June 2, 2023, YouTube said it would no longer remove such posts. The platform would still take down videos that included hate speech, incitements to violence, and harassment, it said.

And then this year, Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and more recently, Threads—followed suit. Meta decided to discontinue its CrowdTangle software. CrowdTangle allowed researchers to comb through Meta’s archives and track how information spread across the company’s platforms. At the time, Meta was under fire for suppressing information about the COVID-19 pandemic and a story discussing information on an old laptop of Hunter Biden’s.

The Biden administration in 2021 had urged Meta to suppress certain content about the COVID-19 virus, including humor and satire, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed later. The company obliged at the time. But, in hindsight, he regretted the Meta’s censorship and said it would act differently going ahead. In regard to the laptop story, the Biden administration had separately approached Meta before the 2020 election. The administration said a Russian disinformation campaign was afoot to smear the Biden family about its connection to a Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings. After that meeting, Zuckerberg saw a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop supposedly owned by the president’s son. The Meta CEO suppressed the story while the company’s fact-checking department investigated the story’s allegations. The story turned out not to be Russian disinformation and Meta should not have suppressed it, Zuckerberg said. 

This summer, tech experts and members of Congress wrote open letters begging the platform to change its mind and keep CrowdTangle. Zuckerberg followed up the decision to terminate CrowdTangle with a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. Meta changed its policies to avoid suppressing or censoring similar information in the future, he added.

The freedom of tweets

For free speech advocates, looser policies are reason to rejoice. Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation expects that—come Election Day—social media companies will give users even more freedom to say what they want. He credited Musk and X with leading the charge to open up social discourse on social media. Because X broke down the barriers to some content, other platforms will likely have to follow suit, Gonzalez said. 

He acknowledged that freedom of speech on social media could come with certain negatives—hate speech and other content that is beyond the pale, as Gonzalez put it. But he prefers those downsides to the alternative. Gonzalez explained that he would rather see ugly discourse on social media that he can judge for himself than have the platform decide for him what content he was allowed to see.

Voters harbor different feelings about the lack of social media moderation. The Bipartisan Policy Center earlier this year released the results of a survey conducted at the end of last year. Americans’ top concern heading into the 2024 election was the proliferation of inaccurate information about elections. And for some voters, that concern has proven valid. Survey data indicates three out of every four Americans report seeing false information about elections, Whaley said. And a majority of Americans also say they don’t know what information to trust, she added.

A united front

A lack of social media content moderation doesn’t just pose a difficulty for American voters, it creates an opportunity for foreign adversaries. Both Whaley and Gonzalez agree that Russia, China, Iran, and a host of non-state actors seek to widen divisions among American voters. Those adversaries, ultimately seek to deepen those divisions and destabilize the United States, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. Department of Justice has accused both Russian and Iranian actors of using artificial intelligence to mass-produce digital content demonizing certain political viewpoints and the individuals who hold them. The DOJ alleges those entities have also played out elaborate schemes, even using fake profiles to carpet bomb Americans’ social media feeds with skewed content.

“We're in an environment where there's just so much bad information,” Whaley said. It’s difficult to quantify the effect that widespread false information has had on America’s information ecosystem, she said. And social media platforms’ algorithms further muddy those waters. Voters should refrain from consuming too much information from a fragmented zeitgeist, she said. Instead, they should get in touch with the real world—and the real voting process—through their communities.

“My big thing this year is to just touch grass, right?” Whaley said. “And that's part of, like, going to your local election official to get information.”