Experts Grade Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube on Readiness to Handle Midterm Election Misinformation
by Dan Hee Kim, Anjan Susaria, and Scott Shackleford
October 17, 2022
Introduction:
(The Conversation) The 2016 U.S. election was a wake-up call about the dangers of political misinformation on social media. With two more election cycles rife with misinformation under their belts, social media companies have experience identifying and countering misinformation. However, the nature of the threat misinformation poses to society continues to shift in form and targets. The big lie about the 2020 presidential election has become a major theme, and immigrant communities are increasingly in the crosshairs of disinformation campaigns – deliberate efforts to spread misinformation.
Social media companies have announced plans to deal with misinformation in the 2022 midterm elections, but the companies vary in their approaches and effectiveness. We asked experts on social media to grade how ready Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube are to handle the task.
Here is a list of basic grades given:
Grader: Dam Hee Kim, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Arizona
Facebook/Meta: C
Twitter: B
TikTok: D
YouTube: B-
Grader: Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University
Facebook/Meta: B-
Twitter: B
TikTok: D
YouTube: B-
Grader: Scott Shackelford, Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University
Facebook/Meta: C
Twitter: B (with a notation that Twitter’s pending change of ownership could affect this scoring).
TikTok: F
YouTube: C+
Read more here:
https://theconversation.com/experts-gr ... on-191249
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