The U.S. presidential election comes at a time of ideal circumstances for disinformation and the people who spread it.
Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists.
As the presidential election approaches, experts warn that a convergence of events at home and abroad, on traditional and social media — and amid an environment of rising authoritarianism, deep distrust, and political and social unrest — makes the dangers from propaganda, falsehoods and conspiracy theories more dire than ever.
The U.S. presidential election comes during a historic year, with billions of people voting in other elections in more than 50 countries, including in Europe, India, Mexico and South Africa. And it comes at a time of ideal circumstances for disinformation and the people who spread it.
An increasing number of voters have proven susceptible to disinformation from former President Donald Trump and his allies; artificial intelligence technology is ubiquitous; social media companies have slashed efforts to rein in misinformation on their platforms; and attacks on the work and reputation of academics tracking disinformation have chilled research.
The Safe Harbor provision of Section 230 of the DMCA should have been revised a decade ago, at least. Service providers such as Twitter and Facebook cannot claim to be blameless third party hosts of content in the same way that telecom providers are, who simply provide a channel of communication.
By taking on the role of curators of information via the use of algorithms that selectively push user-generated content to users of the service, they are engaging in the role of a publisher rather than a means of conveyance or a neutral distributor, and as such should be held as liable for the publication of misinformation as any other media that controls editorial responsibility for published information.
While I understand the argument that 230 was necessary to allow these companies to grow the internet, we’re now talking about individual companies with worths of hundreds of billions of dollars in an industry worth trillions, and the excuse that policing content is not economically viable just do not hold - especially when policing content by pushing articles and media to drive engagement is exactly what they do and what their businesses depend on.
Another way to write this: “A significant portion of the US population is remarkably stupid”
I remember thinking “so what?” about the propaganda and disinformation campaigns by Russia in 2016. How could such a thing work against a country like the USA? What a wake up call that election was. And it’s only continuing to get worse. People are fucking stupid beyond belief.
What scares me the most is the potential and very likely weaponisation of LLM/AI in disinformation campaigns. AI conspiracy theory bots having arguments and referencing fake statistics that people parrot and turn into truths. This is going to be way worse than 2016.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“On one hand, this should feel like January 2020,” said Claire Wardle, co-director of Brown University’s Information Futures Lab, who studies misinformation and elections, referring to the presidential contenders four years ago.
And people who allegedly participated in a scheme to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, including state GOP officials, lawyers and Trump himself, face criminal charges.
“People organizing in Telegram channels and showing up to ballot boxes with guns,” Donovan said, in states that allow it, was an emerging tactic in 2020 and the midterms, by activists who said they were deterring voter fraud.
Elon Musk’s X has led the way as social media platforms including Meta and YouTube have retreated from enforcement and policy and slashed content moderators and trust and safety teams, said Rose Lang-Maso, campaign manager at Free Press, a digital civil rights organization.
Using social media campaigns, the courts and congressional committees, far-right critics have aired unfounded accusations that efforts to curtail disinformation around the election and the pandemic were part of a plot to censor conservatives.
Risks to national security, safety and voting rights aside, the larger threat from the coming wave of disinformation might be in widened partisan divides and weakened public trust.
The original article contains 1,863 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
we have less rights now, wages are lower than ever especially given the inflation, healthcare is substandard, international policies needs help, immigration with obtainable citizenship with human rights left intact is out of reach, militarized police forces running rampant with a GA Cop City training ground on the horizon, journalist being silenced, voters being suppressed or not even allowed to vote, people starving, cost of living skyrocketing sending people crashing sometimes into homelessness, corporations using legal slave labor from prison camps, and the list goes on
but yes trump and disinformation caused this whole mess and vote Biden he is the Jesus of America and only choice we have which makes voting for him not fascist
Everything you listed is a result of the conservative agenda and disinformation largely spread by Republicans. They have absolutely caused this mess and continue to block anyone from attempting to clean it up.
I agree with that assessment. Which is exactly why we can never let “conservatives” into power again to continue the warpath of destruction against the American people that you have described.
