California, Texas and Florida wade into online regulations
The Checkstep Round-Up is a monthly newsletter that gives you fresh insights for content moderation, combating disinformation, fact-checking, and promoting free expression online. The editors of the newsletter are Kyle Dent and Vibha Nayak. Feel free to reach out!
The really big news this month is what’s happening with the new laws in Texas and Florida that would require social media platforms to be viewpoint neutral in enforcing content moderation. There has been disagreement among the lower courts as to the constitutionality of the laws. The Supreme Court hasn’t said yet that they’ll hear the case, but as their new session starts on Monday, it seems inevitable that they will. Some other significant stories this month cover the increasing levels of misogyny and violent rhetoric across many platforms. If the Florida and Texas laws stay in effect, it’s not clear what if anything online platforms will be able to do about that.
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Misinforming the Vote
📃 Google, YouTube outline plans for the US midterm elections (TechCrunch)
We’re back to 2020, when all social media platforms are putting their best feet forward to combat potential campaigns that may be blasted using their respective platforms. This TechCrunch article outlines Google’s plans to go about it.
🗳 Social Media Companies Still Boost Election Fraud Claims, Report Says (The New York Times)
Even as TechCrunch reports on Google’s grand plans to combat election fraud, a new report claims that social media platforms continue to undermine confidence in voting by letting unfounded conspiracy theories spread. (Google is not alone in thinking they’ve got it covered by the way; they all think they’re ready.) The report argues that Big Tech bears the responsibility for the incorrect but widespread belief especially among conservatives that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
📱 💬 Disinformation via text message is a problem with few answers (NBC)
While we’ve been breaking our heads on how to deflect disinformation campaigns on social media, bad actors have taken to basic text messaging to spout doubts about the upcoming elections. In this instance, using abortion protections as bait, texts were sent, a night before the Kansas elections, saying “a “yes” vote protected abortion access in their state, when the opposite was true.
🇪🇸 AFP debuts Spanish-language tip line in the US (Poynter)
The news agency Agence France-Presse just launched a Spanish language disinformation tip line on WhatsApp in time for the fall midterm elections. WhatsApp users can contact a team of fact checkers at AFP to verify information they encounter online.
👑 🙉 Despite efforts to fight falsehoods, Brazil's tight election is threatened by dangerous lies (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)
Brazil also has a major election coming up, which includes selecting a president. The election in Brazil four years ago was plagued with misinformation and things aren’t looking much better this time around.
Moderating the Marketplace of Ideas
👩 Nourah al-Qahtani: Saudi woman jailed for 45 years for social media posts (BBC)
Officials in Saudi Arabia have broad powers to criminalize almost anything critical of the government. Using that power, they sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison because of something she tweeted.
😨 Many Developed Countries View Online Misinformation as ‘Major Threat’ (The New York Times)
As per Pew Research Center’s recent survey, nearly three-quarters of people across 19 countries see the spread of false information online as a “major threat”. The Center’s recent study conducted this year also revealed that Americans see misinformation in conjunction with cybersecurity as a top concern.
🐦 Twitter is finally testing an edit button (The Washington Post)
After much anticipation, Twitter finally is testing an edit button. BUT there’s a catch to it, you’ll need to pay for it. On the flip side, Poynter thinks this edit feature could do more harm than good.
🔍 ✅ Prebunking is effective at fighting misinfo, study finds (Poynter)
Researchers at the Cambridge University found that attempts to inoculate people against misinformation are actually effective at limiting the spread of bad information. They liken its effectiveness to vaccinating against a disease over treating its symptoms after the fact. Nieman Journalism Lab has more details about their approach to the study, and the researchers themselves explained it at The Conversation.
📝 Nobel peace prize winners call for action on online disinformation (The Guardian)
A 10-point manifesto was presented by 2021 Nobel Laureates urging governments to ensure social media platforms to put safety over profits.
📞 📡 How 'China coup' tweets went viral, and what it says about the rapid spread of disinformation (CyberScoop)
False stories about a coup in China dominated Twitter for a couple of days. This account of what happened is a great case study of how far and fast and pervasively disinformation can spread online. Rumors and reportedly confirmed information were even picked up by news organizations.
🪖 The shit-posting, Twitter-trolling, dog-deploying social media army taking on Putin one meme at a time (POLITICO)
Fighting fire with fire and humor, a small group calling themselves NAFO (North American Fellas Organization) is taking on the Russian propaganda machine. The group is an informal alliance of internet culture warriors, national security experts and ordinary Twitter users weaponizing memes, viral videos and even dog photos to push back against Russian online disinformation.
🧑💻 To fight misinformation, Twitter expands project to let users fact-check each other’s tweets (The Washington Post)
Twitter’s experimental Birdwatch program relies on Twitter users to flag and debunk misinformation on the platform. The project is making good progress and is expanding in time for the U.S. midterm elections. TechCrunch has more on the story too.
🤑 Exclusive: Yahoo buys The Factual to add news credibility ratings (Axios)
The first bit of information that struck us is that Yahoo News still gets 200 million plus visitors every month (just kidding—kind of). But the actual news is that they’ve acquired The Factual, a company that uses algorithms to rate the credibility of news sources. Yahoo will apply The Factual labels to their thousands of news sources to help their users understand more context about the information they’re consuming.
🗯 U.S. politicians tweet much more misinformation than those in the U.K. and Germany (Nieman Journalism Lab)
A study of tweets from politicians from the three countries of Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. found that U.S. politicians post a much higher percentage of untrustworthy content in their tweets, and that share has been increasing steeply since 2020. There is also a difference between parties in the U.S., where Republican politicians were found to share untrustworthy websites more than nine times as much as Democratic politicians.
🐻 Meta disables Russian propaganda network targeting Europe (AP News)
Facebook removed what they described as the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort it has found since the invasion of Ukraine began. The company says it was able to disable the operation before it was able to gain a wide audience.
🤷 The Meta Oversight Board says Facebook's automated image takedowns are broken (The Verge)
In less braggy news for Facebook, their own Oversight Board has called out the company for having a problem with automated image removals. In at least one case, a non-offending image was added to the Facebook database of offending images and was, therefore, being systematically removed without any human oversight.
😶 YouTube remains rife with misogyny and harassment, creators say (The Washington Post)
Many creators on YouTube, especially women, are dealing with vicious harassment, bullying, and stalking. A group of creators has told the company that toxicity on the platform is escalating, and networked attacks they are facing online are growing more threatening.
🏋🏻♂️ The online incel movement is getting more violent and extreme, report says (The Washington Post)
The Center for Countering Digital Hate released a report showing that a forum for men who identify as “incels” (involuntarily celibate) is becoming significantly more radicalized. The organization found a significant increase in conversations about mass murder and growing approval of sexually assaulting prepubescent girls.
🪷 In India, Debunking Fake News and Running Into the Authorities (The New York Times)
In the “no good deed goes unpunished” file, two men in India are being targeted by both government officials and anonymous critics for trying to maintain high quality of online information. The two engineers, who became concerned about the volume of and harm from growing misinformation, started a fact checking news platform that has become one of the leading organizations debunking rumors that spread on social media and even creep into the news. They’ve been arrested and are receiving threats for debunking blatant falsehoods.
🔔 TikTok search results rife with misinformation: report (France 24)
As TikTok is becoming the go-to information site among young people even displacing Google for search, the platform is serving up misinformation about important topics in the news like politics, climate change, Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and more, according to a recent report from NewsGuard. False or misleading claims in TikTok search results include conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon and potentially dangerous home recipes for hydroxychloroquine.
Regulatory News and Updates
🇺🇸 Sweeping Children’s Online Safety Bill Is Passed in California (The New York Times)
The California legislature passed the first piece of legislation in the U.S. that will require apps and websites to make special provisions for users under 18 years of age. It goes well beyond any federal protections. Critics say the bill is too broad.
⚖️ 🇺🇸 California becomes first state to make firms disclose social media policies (Los Angeles Times)
California has become the first state to require social media companies to publish their policies for removing content including all kinds of toxic speech. They must also provide details on how and when they remove that content. Social media companies are not fans of the new law. The Washington Post covered the story as well.
🏛️ Appeals Court Upholds Texas Social Media Law on Censorship (The New York Times)
This is huge news and will inevitably lead to a showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court. Stay tuned.
🙊 Tunisia’s ‘disinfo’ decree threatens to lock up rule violators (Poynter)
In the latest of ongoing steps to silence dissent, Tunisia passed a law to imprison purveyors of misinformation. Critics say the law is meant to silence voices that would be critical of the government and President Kais Saied.
🇻🇳 EXCLUSIVE Vietnam preparing rules to limit news posts on social media accounts (Reuters)
Details are still being worked out, but the government in Vietnam is expected to issue new rules that will limit which social media accounts will be allowed to post news-related content. The rules will allow the government to control news that’s allowed on platforms like Facebook and YouTube and will require significant additional content moderation effort.
Tweets worth a second look