US Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have joined those currently publicly pressuring companies behind social media platforms and encrypted messages – they have identified 11 of the most widely used ones – to make sure they “combat election disinformation.”
Specifically, four Democrats (the letter was also signed by Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren) want to know what these companies’ censorship plans are: the senators phrase it as the need to discover what measures will be taken to “de-amplify” (and that includes removal) content and accounts seen as spreading the said type of disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
How will the tech companies know this is happening on their platforms? They will, the senators write if that content or accounts violate their policies. (That is, those same vague and restrictive policies that have been used and abused over the years.)
As far as Wyden and Merkley and others are concerned, it doesn’t matter if this content they consider to be election disinformation is AI-generated or not.
On the encrypted chat apps front, they want the companies operating them to “explain whether they have a reporting system for their users to flag unwanted election disinformation and what enforcement measures are in place.”
To cover all this the way the senators see fit, the companies and their platforms – Meta, Google (YouTube), TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon (Twitch), Discord, Signal, Telegram, and Apple (Messages) – are urged to “increase resources” needed to fight what the US lawmakers describe in terms presented as a national-level crisis.
They warn that disinformation that is allegedly now more present than ever could suppress voter participation, but also “sow doubt in US democracy and incite political violence.”
The many times repeated references are made in the senators’ letter about alleged foreign disinformation campaigns during the 2020 and 2022 elections in the US, and a note is made that this “disinformation” would at that time remain online longer if it was in Spanish.
Essentially, what Wyden and Merkley now want from the tech giants – but also companies like Signal, that bill themselves as the ultimate privacy-friendly choice – is a report, to keep them on the straight and narrow, at least the way that is perceived by four Democrat senators at the height of a presidential campaign.
“Share information about the size and capacity of their 2024 US elections safety resourcing – including personnel and technologies – broken down by language,” is the opening demand aimed at social platforms.
