(PatriotWise.com)- Rights groups said on Thursday that social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok need to take immediate action to mitigate the impact of false information spread on their platforms during the midterm congressional elections in the United States this year. This includes Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that his loss in 2020 was due to fraud.
In a letter to the executives of social media platforms, more than one hundred advocacy organizations, led by Common Cause, said that social media platforms had retreated from policies designed to combat election disinformation after Democratic Vice President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race.
They claimed, citing studies and public reporting, that there has been a proliferation of false information, which led to the deadly attack on the United States Capitol committed by supporters of the president of the United States at the time, Donald Trump, on January 6, 2021.
In a letter to the chief executives of social media companies, more than one hundred organizations led by Common Cause included their signatures.
The letter said that high-profile disinformation spreaders and other bad actors continue to use social media platforms to disseminate messages that undermine trust in elections. Candidates are utilizing the Big Lie as a platform plank to pre-emptively declare voting fraud to challenge the results of the 2022 election. This undermines trust in the integrity of our elections, which is harmful to democratic processes in the United States.
In the letter, which was also addressed to the CEOs of Google, Instagram LLC, and Snap Inc., the organizations were encouraged to take specific actions, including emphasizing fact-checking and giving external researchers and watchdogs access to data in real-time.
According to what was stated in the letter, the “Big Lie” that Trump’s loss of the White House in 2020 was due to voting fraud has to be the top priority in the misinformation battleground.
In addition to this, the groups demanded increased openness concerning political ads, procedures of enforcement, and algorithmic models.
Many other organizations, including those concerned with voting rights and election integrity, as well as the Arab American Institute, the Center for American Progress, the League of Women Voters, Greenpeace, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, have also put their names to the petition.
How many of these organizations felt that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a hoax perpetrated by the Russians, and it was right to suppress that “disinformation”?
