Social networks are working to remove fake news and misinformation ahead of the US election.
Last week, Facebook decided to stop election ads and content about Covid-19 in the final week of the election campaign.
This decision by social networks comes after the experience they had in the 2016 elections, with the production of fake news believed to have been made by Russian groups, with the aim of creating chaos and confusion among the American electorate.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that his company has laid off more than 100 networks who have interfered in American elections in past years.
Fake news has become an issue after the US elections. Viral social media posts related to the recent US elections, published by hyper-partisan accounts and websites with click-bait content, are believed to have influenced voters, American media reports.
It was later revealed that the fabricated stories were created by so-called "content farms", run by young people from the Balkans, namely North Macedonia. However, Russian influence on these content farms was soon proven.
Infodemic
In 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the most controversial US presidential race in a decade, creates a perfect information storm, also supported by conspiracy theorists.
In April of this year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations officially identified the term "Infodemic” which refers to fake news related to Covid-19. In a world preoccupied with the Corona virus, there has been a flood of online publications about conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, dangerous false health advice, rampant discrimination and stigmatization related to the disease.
Disinformation about the pandemic in the digital space grew so much that it forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to add a section on their website for "widespread myths".
But all this has not stopped the pandemic from becoming heavily politicized in the US, where epidemic prevention and control measures, including home isolation and mask-wearing, have become points of contention this election season. At the same time, far-right conspiracists like “QAnon" are enjoying unprecedented attention at this time.
More than a platform
"Big Tech" (the group of the world's largest technology companies) are constantly accused of not doing enough in spreading fake news and regulating information on the internet.
Zuckerberg has always said that Facebook is a platform, not a media company. But these social platforms have grown and their role has become more powerful than most news organizations in terms of information distribution.
In their efforts to fact-check information and remove fake news, including that spread by government officials, the industry continues to face scrutiny over its handling of political speech, particularly during election periods.
The real culprit algorithm?
A 2018 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published in the journal Science found that fake news spread on Twitter spread six times faster and generated 70 percent more retweets than real news.
Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst and author of a book that tackles disinformation, said the highly congested nature of social media increases online disinformation.
Additionally, social media algorithms are designed to keep their users engaged by creating digital rooms that make users victims of their browsing habits. As a result, people become more likely to believe things that confirm their partisan biases and dismiss everything outside their bubbles, further polarizing public opinions on everything from face masks to racism.
Another major influence on misinformation is conspiracy theories and their spread online. Their spread is reaching record levels of readability. Hany Farid, a professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, says that when it comes to conspiracy theories, there is a phenomenon called the “boomerang effect” – when you tell someone that what they think is wrong, it only entrenches them in that theory.
“This is the world we live in now – where facts have become something other than what they should be,” he said.