How Facebook And Twitter Are Fighting Misinformation In Election

Dhir Acharya - Nov 04, 2020

Another election has come and Twitter, Facebook are facing another wave of misinformation, including posts containing premature victory claims.

Now that Americans have turned to mail-in ballots for voting following the pandemic, it may not be clear who wins today. More than 96 million people in the US have voted ahead of Election Day with voters representing over 45 percent of registered voters in the US. According to Election officials, counting votes may take days, which will delay the announcement of the presidential race as well as other important elections that are going on.

However, social platforms are preparing in case some politicians may attempt to declare their victory before the official results come out. Donald Trump said that he would declare victory on election night if he seems ahead in the race, as reported by Axios.

Facebook and Twitter have created new labels that warn users that votes are still in the counting process and that users will be directed to authoritative information. On Monday, they showed the labels, which will appear below posts featuring premature declare of the winner.

Twitter users will see blue labels with an exclamation mark, one of which will say “Official sources called this election differently” while another will say “Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted.”

The social giant said a result will be considered official if it comes from a state official or at least two out of seven national news outlets make the call, including Fox News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, NBC News, CBS, the Associated Press, and ABC.

Meanwhile, Facebook has created labels in black print that will show up below a presidential candidate’s or a party’s posts if they declare premature victory. The label will say “Votes are being counted. The winner of the 2020 US Presidential Election has not been projected. See Election updates,” and another label on Instagram says “Votes are being counted. The winner of the 2020 US Presidential Election has not been projected.”

The world-leading social platform said its reliable sources include the Associated Press, the National Election Pool/Edison via Reuters, along with 6 independent decision desks of major media outlets, through which it will determine when the presidential winner gets projected.

The labels on Facebook has a look similar to other notices users often see for misinformation, such as false statements about COVID-19. As of now, we can’t tell how effective the labels are as social networks previously struggled to label misinformation correctly. In addition, they face allegations from conservatives, who say they are trying to swing the election, but the social giants denied the claims.