After social media giants were misused by Russia to bombard American voters with divisive messages before the presidential vote four years ago, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have attempted to ensure it doesn’t happen again by spending billions of dollars improving their security and policies, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Facebook said it has poured billions of dollars into beefing up its security operations to battle misinformation and other harmful content, with more than 35,000 people working in this area.
“We’ve applied lessons from previous elections, built new teams with experience across different areas, and created new products and policies to prepare for various scenarios before, during, and after Election Day,” Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said
Twitter has gone even further to fight misinformation than Facebook in some areas by, for example, banning political advertising entirely last year. It also started labeling tweets by politicians if they spread inaccurate information or glorify violence.
On Election Day, Twitter will add labels to tweets from candidates who claim victory before it is called by authoritative sources.
Twitter named the seven outlets it will use to determine whether a race is officially called, all of which, experts agree, have verified, unbiased decision desks, Axios reported.
The list includes ABC News, AP, CNN, CBS News, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, and NBC News.
YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan told the Times he had several meetings a week with staff to talk about the election, but there were not last-minute attempts to rewrite policies.
However, YouTube said it would be especially sensitive about videos that try to challenge the election’s integrity and will display a fact-check information panel above election-related search results and below videos discussing the results.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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