Free Press: Tech Platforms Failing To Sufficiently Protect Elections In 2024

By Free Press Photos: YouTube Screenshots WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Free Press released Democracy Deferred: Social-Media Companies’ Meager Commitments to Election Integrity in 2024, an analysis of 12 major technology companies’ readiness to address political disinformation, manipulation and hate on their networks. The analysis is based on the companies’ responses to six specific recommendations from a global coalition of more than 200 civil-society organizations. Earlier this month, the coalition sent a letter to executives of the technology platforms, giving them until April 22 to respond. The coalition asked the platforms to indicate whether they would adopt or reject the six recommendations and commit to protecting election integrity in 2024. The recommendations include reinstating election-integrity policies, better enforcing policies across languages and staffing up critical trust and safety teams. The letter also calls on platforms to enable civil-society oversight of their enforcement practices, require clear disclosure of AI-generated political content and prohibit the use of deepfakes in political ads.Democracy Deferred reveals the companies’ full responses to the coalition letter and scores each platform’s preparedness to address the scourge of disinformation and hate that plagues social media during the election years. Eight of the 12 tech companies responded, including Meta and Instagram...