Facebook and Twitter Fail to Stop Vote-By-Mail Lies

In August, a video posted on social media by a Florida woman named Tina Brown outlined what she claimed were potential hazards with mail-in election ballots. Brown said envelopes for registered Democratic voters included a D in the barcode, while envelopes for Republicans contained an R. She then asserted that a left-leaning mail carrier could use the identifiers to suppress Republican votes while saying, “Let’s just chuck it.”

But Brown’s video omitted the fact that the ballots were for separate party primaries, leaving the impression that they were for the general election in November.

Even so, the Facebook video gained 175,000 views from mid-August through late September and inspired similar false content across Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., YouTube and TikTok Inc. That the bogus claim spread so easily across the internet highlights the challenges facing social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, both of which are attempting to crack down on false information, particularly around voting, even as a torrent of misinformation continues.

It also shows the challenges facing government officials, who are trying to manage a presidential election in the midst of a global pandemic and a sharp uptick in online posts about mail-in voting. Volume has surged 91% in recent months, and much of it involves false information, including that mail-in ballots won’t count and that mail-in voting creates fraud, according to new research from Clemson University.

Such falsehoods have been fueled by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, according to researchers. In last Tuesday’s Presidential debate, he cited unproven allegations about fraud associated with mail-in ballots as a reason for telling his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully” -- a claim that cast doubt on the integrity of the election.

A new Harvard University working paper -- which analyzed more than 5 million tweets, 75,000 Facebook posts and 55,000 media stories online -- found that the Trump campaign and Fox News were the driving force behind false claims about mail-in ballots, with social media playing a supporting role. Clemson’s research found that Trump’s Twitter account has been the most influential in the online conversation about mail-in voting.

More broadly, experts believe that vote-by-mail conspiracies would likely be relegated to the fringes of social media were it not for Trump’s consistent use of his Twitter feed as well as TV appearances, rallies, press conferences and the recent presidential debate to malign mail-in ballots.

While assessments by the U.S. intelligence community and others indicate that mail-in voting doesn’t compromise the integrity of the election outcome, disinformation researchers are raising concerns about the level of fake claims being spread by domestic social media users amid inadequate pushback from social media companies.

In a recent analysis of social media platforms, the Election Integrity Partnership found that none of them had “clear, transparent policies” regarding content that “aims to delegitimize election results on the basis of false claims.” More broadly, it found that while platforms generally agree that “special attention” is required for false information related to the election, “few platforms have comprehensive policies on election-related content.”

Facebook and Twitter -- both of which announced expanded protocols for promoting election information accuracy last month -- have inconsistently enforced their policies that treat content they deem newsworthy or in the public interest differently from other posts, the analysis found. In the case of Brown’s video, Twitter removed all but one post containing the video but didn’t act on instances where the same misleading claim was made in tweets, according to the Election Integrity Partnership. Facebook allowed the video to remain online but labeled it with links to additional context.

A Twitter spokesperson said it’s against the company’s rules “to use our service for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections. This includes posting or sharing content that may suppress participation or mislead people about when, where or how to participate in an election.” Twitter uses “strong enforcement action” and constantly updates its rules to “protect the online public conversation on mail-in ballots,” the spokesperson said.

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