🔒 Social media giants buck up US election approach: Here’s how – With insights from Wall Street Journal

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With opinion polls suggesting a Joe Biden and Democratic party landslide in tomorrow’s US elections, social media giants are doing their utmost to ensure no repeat of the apparent partisan approach four years ago. Here’s a summary of how Google, Facebook and Twitter have prepared for November 3 from our partners at the Wall Street Journal, with plenty of links if you’re keen to dig further. – Alec Hogg

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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The social media election

By Robert McMillan of the Wall Street Journal

US elections

The social-media giants have spent almost four years preparing for this moment, trying to prevent election meddling on their platforms. With polls closing Tuesday and America braced to wait perhaps days or more for the outcome, Facebook, Twitter and others will learn if their work has paid off.

The companies have invested heavily in new systems to track and disrupt foreign disinformation on their platforms since their actions around the 2016 vote were heavily criticized. They’ve undertaken a stream of account takedowns and, disinformation researchers say, bad actors now need to be a lot more technically sophisticated to manipulate the platforms.

Still, the intelligence community and tech world is concerned an enemy may strike, especially if there is any delay in declaring a definitive election result.

If there is post-election violence in the U.S., Facebook is ready to deploy tools it uses in “at-risk” countries to tamp-down viral and inflammatory posts.

At Facebook and, especially, at Twitter, though, there are signs the company is still figuring some things out. That became clear when it took action around articles the New York Post published starting on Oct. 14, based on what the newspaper said were emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Twitter treated the articles as though they were part of what’s known as a “hack and leak” operation, banning users from tweeting links to the stories, only to lift the ban. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the way the company handle the issue was “unacceptable.” Twitter also locked the New York Post’s account, demanding the tabloid to delete tweets about the story. Twitter reversed its decision Friday.

For Mr. Dorsey, it was only the latest bout of turmoil in a year when he’s been criticized as being a part-time CEO. (He also runs financial-services firm Square.)

The New York Post controversy rekindled criticism, particularly from conservatives, about alleged social-media censorship. Some voiced those views loudly during a Senate Commerce committee hearing where the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter had been summoned.

And the incident illustrates a problem that many tech companies could face, particularly if the outcome is contested: To keep their platforms free of disinformation, they’re going to have to make judgment calls bound to upset somebody.

But if they flub their response, they may upset everybody.

* Bob McMillan is a tech reporter based in San Francisco.

Write to Robert McMillan at [email protected]

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