United States: how do social networks intend to fight disinformation?

Strongly criticized by the US authorities for their inaction in this regard, TikTok, Twitter and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram and Facebook, recently declared that they were taking measures to combat political disinformation and its promotion on their respective platforms.

TikTok notably announced on Wednesday, August 17, that it wanted to prevent content creators from posting paid political messages on the video app, Reuters reports. A measure that is part of a context, that of the US midterm elections scheduled for November, about which there is a significant risk in this area according to local authorities.

Limit controversial content

This phenomenon is not new. To stop it, the Chinese social network prohibited, as of 2019, the purchase of political ads. To no avail: To promote their messages, political strategists finally turned to influencers. Likewise, the Chinese platform organizes information sessions with creators and talent agencies to remind them that the publication of paid political content is prohibited, specifies Eric Han, head of security for TikTok in the United States.

Also, heading into the midterm ballot, internal TikTok teams will be on alert to spot and punish paid creators for posting political content. Finally, the company will use the reports provided by the media and partners to identify controversial content and remove it from the platform.

national security fears

With these announcements, TikTok hopes to temper the concerns that it raises in the United States. In fact, the social network is in the crosshairs of the US authorities. The latter fear that the Chinese government will use it to access information about US users of the application on the grounds that their personal data belongs to Byte Dance, a company based in Beijing.

TikTok’s announcement comes as other platforms, Meta and Twitter in particular, also deploying its system to combat electoral disinformation. The group led by Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement on Tuesday, August 16, that it was committed to preventing political advertisers from running new posts a week before the election.

The company will also have a network of independent “data verifiers” in charge of verifying the information disseminated on its platforms. Twitter, for its part, indicated last week that it would publish warning messages against misleading tweets and insert reliable information in the timelines. Not enough for civil rights experts.