American Elections 2020 – Social Media / Conspiration Theories
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KH Anglais Presse File 5 – American Elections 2020 – Social Media / Conspiration Theories A/ Who will choose the next US president – the American people, or Facebook? Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, Fri 31 Jul 2020 globally and instantly and, at the same time, deliver them to a precisely selected audience, thanks to the This week, in a hearing on Capitol Hill, you could copious data Facebook holds on its users, the use of gaze upon the men with the power to determine which allows ads to be micro-targeted for a price. And November’s presidential election and the future of remember, this data isn’t limited to the attitudes you American democracy – but the men in question were not might have expressed online, but could include the politicians. Rather they were the four tech titans who purchases you’ve made on your credit card, even the appeared before a congressional committee. Even via mundane details of your life, as recorded by the gadgets video link, the power radiated from them: the heads of that comprise the internet of things. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple loomed from the Occasionally the social media behemoths are monitors as veritable masters of the universe, their compelled to take at least the appearance of action, if elected questioners mere earthlings. only for the sake of managing their own reputations. It That hardly exaggerates their might. Between them, happened this week, with the eventual removal of grime and with their users numbered in the billions, Facebook artist Wiley from multiple platforms after he went on an and Google determine much of what the human race extended, hate-filled rant against Jews: after a 48-hour sees, reads and knows. Mark Zuckerberg’s writ runs “walkout” from Twitter, organised by an ad-hoc group across the planet, no single government is able to of activists and celebrities, the network appeared to constrain him: he is an emperor of knowledge, a realise hosting high-profile racism isn’t a good look. minister of information for the entire world. A mere Today, Twitter removed the account of white tweak of an algorithm by Facebook can decide whether supremacist David Duke, which prompts the question: lies, hate and conspiracy theories spread or shrivel. what on earth took you so long? That’s been true for a while, but in 2020 it’s gained an Make no mistake, the presence of lies and hate on extra urgency. We know the impact social media had in these platforms is not some regrettable bug. It is a the US election in 2016 – when ever wilder fictions and feature. The business model for social media requires fantasies were allowed to proliferate about Hillary attention – eyeballs – and the best way to get that is Clinton and when, according to the Oxford scholar engagement. Messages that stir anger, fury and yes, Philip Howard in a new book, Lie Machines: “There hate, keep people online more effectively than content was a one-to-one ratio of junk news to professional that is merely interesting or amusing. It’s why studies news shared by voters over Twitter.” In fewer than 100 show that false news spreads faster than true news: the days Americans will choose a president, and there are algorithms are designed to favour virality over veracity. no guarantees that the same thing will not happen again. What can be done? There’s no shortage of ideas. Some What’s more, it’s now clear that the online spread of start with the demand for fact-checking and, after the falsehoods is a matter of life and death. (They knew that 2016 election, Facebook took steps in that direction. But already in Myanmar, where the violence against the when it emerged that one of its fact-checking partners Rohingya people was incited on Facebook.) In the midst was Daily Caller, a rightwing news website known for of a pandemic, solid, verified information is an essential pushing misinformation, the scheme’s credibility tool of public health. If bogus claims and unhinged plunged. conspiracy theories – like those aired in a pseudo- Or, more simply, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter documentary such as Plandemic – land in people’s news could admit that of course they are publishers and they feeds, it’s as if the water supply has become should therefore take the responsibility that goes with contaminated. Eventually Facebook and YouTube took the mighty power they have. If that means hiring a down Plandemic, with its evidence-free assertions that million moderators to check their content, weeding out Covid-19 is the fault of Bill Gates and the World Health lies and hate, then so be it. They can hardly cry poverty: Organization, that vaccines are bad and that wearing a these are close to trillion-dollar companies. mask is dangerous, but not before millions had ingested If they don’t like the analogy with publishers, then that garbage on those platforms. perhaps they’d rather be treated like, say, car Of course, cranks and fantasists have been with us manufacturers, who, if found to be delivering a forever, but social media has given them a reach they dangerously faulty product, have to recall and fix that could never have dreamed of. Armed with Facebook, product, regardless of the expense. At the moment, the the would-be propagandist can distribute messages social media giants enjoy legal protection from such But, as this week’s hearing proved, elected liability in the US. representatives are not powerful enough to do that Politicians could change that, just as they could alone. They’d have to work together, governments follow Howard’s demands in Lie Machines and break across the globe. They’d need the backing of the big companies’ “monopolisation of information” by advertisers, withdrawing their pounds and dollars from legislating a citizens’ right to donate their own data to companies that give a platform to hate. And they’d need smaller organisations: that way such groups would be all of us to declare we’re sick of this poison in the more able to compete with the tech giants and those able information bloodstream, and we won’t rest till it’s to pay for their services. drained away. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist B/Misinformation about Biden’s health spreads after debate TikTok videos and Trump ads with false information got more than 700,000 views and clicks USA Today, Oct. 1, 2020 False stories about Joe Biden’s health continued to spread on social platforms the day after the first presidential debate, including misleading Facebook ads by the Trump campaign and a viral video on TikTok. A false story about Biden wearing an earpiece that emerged on Tuesday continued to get traction on Facebook after the debate. The Trump campaign ad, which encourages people to “Check Joe’s Ears,” and asked “Why won’t Sleepy Joe commit to an earpiece inspection,” was viewed between 200 to 250,000 times and marketed primarily to people over 55 in Texas and Florida. The implication of the ad, the content of which originated from a tweet by a New York Post reporter who cited a single anonymous source, is that Biden needed the assistance of an earpiece so someone could pass him information during the debates. And on the video platform TikTok, four grainy videos alleging that Biden was wearing a wire to “cheat” during the debate racked up more than half a million combined views on Wednesday, according to research by the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters. One of the videos shows a still of Biden with his hand inside his suit, while another overlays an arrow over Biden’s tie, but neither video shows any visual evidence of Biden wearing an electronic device of any kind. Tech companies have long struggled with misinformation and are on high-alert going into the election. Ahead of the debate, Twitter and Facebook executives reviewed hashtags, trends, and other accounts that may break the companies’ rules using a combination of software and human review. The companies are also pushing out accurate information about how to register to vote to millions of people. But the latest evidence shows that they continue to struggle, particularly when it comes to falsehoods spread by the president and his followers. On Wednesday night, Facebook said the falsehoods would undermine the legitimacy of the election, following the company’s previous announcement of a ban on new ads in the week before the election. Adding to concerns, Twitter said it acted on a tip from the FBI to remove 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran and were attempting to sow disinformation during the presidential debate. Twitter said the accounts had a minimal reach. TikTok said it would remove the Biden video after being contacted by The Washington Post. The company prohibits misinformation that “misleads community members about elections or other civic processes.” The campaign ad on Facebook focusing on Biden reveals a significant hole in the social media giant’s enforcement efforts. Though the company says it spends a huge amount of resources combating election- related misinformation — including on fact-checking posts and news articles — the social network does not fact-check political ads as a matter of policy. That makes paid speech an exploitable category for misinformation. Hundreds of Facebook employees have opposed the company’s policy to not fact- check political ads. (…) Facebook did take the rare step on Wednesday of removing Trump ads that made baseless claims that accepting more refugees would increase health risks related to the pandemic. There were more than 30 versions of the ad running on the social network, according to Facebook’s ad transparency library.