Author and affiliation: Nicolas Hénin, EU DisinfoLab
Reviewer and affiliation: Rasto Kuzel, MEMO 98
Introduction
- The present factsheet delves into platforms’ policies on election misinformation, focusing on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter. All these platforms have been qualified as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) by the European Union Digital Services Act and will have to comply with particularly stringent regulations and justify the means they deploy to combat disinformation. In addition, they will be particularly scrutinised during events with a high social impact, such as elections.
- Generally speaking, all the platforms discussed here have identified the potential for harm that electoral misinformation contains: reduction of trust in democratic institutions, not accepting the outcome of the vote, voter suppression, calls for violence or even the overthrow of the institutions, etc.
- As with our other factsheet on misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, this document is hampered by the fact that election-related policies are sometimes confused with general policies to combat misinformation. However, this factsheet attempts to focus as much as possible on electoral misinformation and the policies against it.
- This paper is designed to provide a summary of the state of play in order to show how the five largest platforms in the world have taken up the subject of electoral misinformation. In particular, it presents the definitions of prohibited, organic and advertising content, as well as the policy of reducing visibility or deletion.
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