Google, Twitter announce new measures against misinformation ahead of US elections

Google and Twitter have announced further measures to clamp down on misinformation as the tech giants expect a flood of false claims on their platforms ahead of US elections. Twitter said that users wanted the micro-blogging platform to present disputed information that could cause confusion about an election with more context.

In a blog posted on September 10, Twitter said that unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results could undermine faith in the process itself. It added that misleading claims about the results or outcome of a civic process could lead to interference with the implementation of the results of the process.

“We will not permit our service to be abused around civic processes, most importantly elections,” stated Twitter, adding that the policy will take effect on September 17, 2020. 

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More screening of autocomplete

Separately, Google said that the company has long-standing policies to protect against hateful and inappropriate predictions from appearing in Autocomplete and it has expanded its scope vis-a-vis elections. Google announced that it will remove predictions that could be interpreted as claims for or against any candidate or political party. 

The tech giant said that it will also remove predictions that could be interpreted as a claim about participation in the election. Statements about voting methods, requirements, or the status of voting locations will be blocked from Autocomplete. Google said that predictions like “you can vote by phone” as well as “you can't vote by phone,” or a prediction that says “donate to” any party or candidate, should not appear in Autocomplete. 

In a bid to actively block misinformation, Facebook announced last week that the company would stop accepting new political ads in the final week of the presidential elections campaign. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there may not be enough time to contest new claims in the final days of elections, prompting the social media to decline new political or issue ad requests. 

“| generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims,” wrote Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

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