A Comparative Look at Tech Company Election Announcements
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A Comparative Look at Tech Company Election Announcements
Tis the season for the platforms to tell us what they’ll be doing for the midterms - so I made a chart
Can you believe it’s September already? Where did the summer go? For this last newsletter before the Fall deluge hits us, I want to take a look at the various announcements the tech companies have made about their midterm election plans. I also want to talk about some recommendations we released last week at the Bipartisan Policy Center about how tech companies and election officials can work together to protect the integrity of elections online.
First, a look at the company announcements. Over the last couple of weeks Twitter, Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, Salesforce, and even Parler have put out blog posts detailing their work around the midterms. (Well, Parler didn’t really put out much detail other than they won’t be taking anything down.) I was curious to compare what each company chose to focus on and so, of course, I made a graph.
UPDATE: Turns out LinkedIn had done a post on August 25th about some of their efforts in this space that I had totally missed. You can read it here. Graph is also updated.
One really quick caveat before I jump in. This is just looking at what the companies focused on in their announcements. It is not comprehensive of everything they are doing. So don’t look at this as a report card or anything - it’s just a look at what each wanted to or didn’t want to highlight. Also, Parler is not represented in the chart mainly because I found the link to their announcement this morning and I had already sent the grid to the BPC digital team to be posted.
The things that stand out to me are:
Meta’s the only one who gives a number to how many teams and how much money they’ve spent on safety and security.
Only Twitter gives numbers about the effectiveness of their labels.
Only Google and Meta specifically call out their work on fighting foreign interference (though I know the other platforms do it too)
TikTok, Twitter and YouTube address how they recommend political content; however, Facebook is still not recommending political content in groups according to a recent interview by Tom Alison they just didn’t highlight it.
Only YouTube briefly mentioned how they are working with political content creators to use features such as shorts. TikTok mentioned doing briefings for creators about their policies around political paid influencer content, but not about best practices. Twitter talked about how they label candidate accounts, but nothing about helping them to use various features like we very much saw in the past. Crickets from the rest of them even though those teams still very much exist and they have content elsewhere on their sites (Meta) for candidates.
Helping candidates and others protect their accounts is a popular talking point for almost all companies as is helping people to find authoritative information about where, when, and how to vote.
Only Google didn’t talk about how they are putting out information in languages other than English.
All of the platforms other than Salesforce also talked about their election content policies.
Nothing yet about any election war rooms though I imagine that will be the type of announcement they talk about come October.
Finally, all other than Salesforce and YouTube talked about their policies around political and issue ads.
The companies are clearly trying to play up the work that they think will be the least controversial and downplay that which could draw ire from all sorts of people and groups. Not every platform is the same, so I’m not saying everyone should be doing the same things, but it does make it confusing to know exactly what each platform is or isn’t doing. Can also be worth asking these companies what - if anything - they are doing if they didn’t talk about it. For instance, I know why TikTok doesn’t want to talk about combating foreign interference but seems like something they should have an answer on.
This takes me to the recommendations we put out last week. You can read it in more depth at the link but these came out of a threat ideation exercise we did in July with tech companies and election officials. It was a fantastic way to brainstorm various ways that things could go sideways in the weeks leading up to and after the election. It was also a great opportunity for members of these two communities to meet and learn more about the challenges each faces in doing this work. At a high level here were the recommendations:
Recognize that future cycles will look different
Engage early
Prepare responses before they are needed
Know the difference between bad actors’ intentional spreading of false information and news stories that need corrections
Be sure to confirm the credibility of threats as well as the threats’ source
Remember that it is not possible to address every piece of MDM (Mis/Dis/Malinformation)
Work with community groups to boost authoritative information
Create working relationships between tech companies, election officials, federal officials, and civil society groups
Election officials and tech companies should rely on CISA resources
Command centers operated by federal representatives, IT workers, and election officials can work continuously to mitigate harm to cybersecurity
Policies should be transparently communicated
Collaborating with election officials to design great products
Adopt an “always on” approach
Our hope is that these can be taken into account not just for the midterms, but for 2024 planning which, frankly, should already be happening.
I hope everyone has a lovely Labor Day weekend. I hope to get out for a hike at Scott’s Run tomorrow morning but otherwise working on more organizing projects at home and the analysis of the database of links about tech company announcements on elections that now goes all the way back to 1996!
What I’m Reading
The Information: Tech Firms Race to Hire Policy Leaders, Triggering Ripple Effects Across Washington
Bloomberg: Russia's Conspiracy-Theory Factory Is Swaying a Brand-New Audience
Guardian: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns as a form of control
New Yorker: Can Pickleball Save America?
World Unpacked: On the Frontlines Fighting Disinformation
Washington Post: Republicans are increasingly sharing misinformation, research finds
The Verge: How the head of Facebook plans to compete with TikTok and win back Gen Z
ProPublica: Real Money, Fake Musicians: Inside a Million-Dollar Instagram Verification Scheme
Big Technology Podcast: YouTube's Uneasy World Domination — With Mark Bergen
Know Your Meme: Where Do Memes Come From? The Top Platforms From 2010-2022
Axios: Robotext onslaught: Americans are suing campaigns for the incessant texts
The Verge: Meta plans to bring paid features to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp
Economist: How has open-source intelligence influenced the war in Ukraine?
New York Times: Farewell, Typos! Twitter Unveils an Edit Button.
Think Tanks/Academia/Other
Center for Growth and Opportunity: CGO Tech Poll
New America: Misleading Information and the Midterms
Michael J. Nelson: How to Read Journal Articles Like a Professor
Content Policy and Society Lab: Content Governance In The Metaverse
Journal of Online Trust and Safety: Special Issue on Uncommon Yet Consequential Online Harms
Integrity Institute: Middleware and the Customization of Content Moderation
Brazilian Report: How Lula tries to enter the social media game
Psychology Today: What Makes People Share Misinformation on Social Media?
People vs Big Tech: A 10-point plan to address our information crisis
Companies
Google: Our ongoing work to support the 2022 U.S. midterm elections
Cloudflare: Cloudflare's abuse policies & approach
Twitter: This is a test of Twitter’s new Edit Tweet feature. This is only a test
Twitter: Italian Election Partnership
Parler: Parler Announces Midterm Election Content Policy to Guarantee Free Speech
Jobs
International Republican Institute - Program Associate - Technology & Democracy
Integrity Institute: Community Organizer, Partnerships and Operations Coordinator and Research Project Manager
Freedom House: Policy and Advocacy Officer or Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Technology and Democracy
There are **many** open positions at Freedom House. Check them out here: https://freedomhouse.org/about-us/careers
National Endowment for Democracy: Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program
Democracy Works: Openings for software engineer and director of HR
Atlantic Council DFR Lab: Variety of positions open. More info at link.
Atlantic Council: #DigitalSherlocks Scholarships
Meta Oversight Board: Variety of positions open. More info at link.
National Democratic Institute (NDI): Variety of positions open. More info at link.
Protect Democracy: Technology Policy Advocate
Calendar
Topics to keep an eye on that have a general timeframe of the first half of the year:
Facebook 2020 election research
Oversight Board opinion on cross-check
Senate & House hearings, markups, and potential votes
September 6 - 8: Code 2022 - Vox/Recode Silicon Valley Conference
September 11 - Sweden elections
September 13 - New Hampshire Primary (Hassan defending Senate seat)
September 13 - Twitter Whistleblower Hearing
September 13 - 27: UN General Assembly
Sept 20 - High level general debate begins
September 15 - International Day of Democracy
September 21-23: Atlantic Festival
September 27 - 28: Trust Con
September 28 - 30: Athens Democracy Forum
September 29 - 30: Trust and Safety Research Conference
October 2 and 30: Brazil
October 15 - 22: SXSW Sydney
October 17: Twitter/Musk Trial Begins
November 8: United States Midterms
March 10 - 19: SXSW
March 20 - 24, 2023: Mozilla Fest
Events to keep an eye on but nothing scheduled: