Combatting Digital Misinformation to Protect Democracy

In addition to using data from companies like Facebook, political operatives can and often do use the practice of geofencing, defined as “technology that creates a virtual geographic boundary, enabling software to trigger a response when a cellphone enters or leaves a particular area”. For example, one group, Catholic Vote, used geofencing to identify over 90 thousand Catholics not registered to vote in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, based on their mass attendance. The group intends to tailor messages to this untapped electoral resource.

Digital advertising of this kind allows candidates and organizations to run highly effective, personalized, and cost-efficient shadow campaigns on social media using highly sensitive and private information. In doing so, they avoid fact-checking, standards of decency, and government oversight. In response, several leaders have announced plans of varying strength and effectiveness to hold social media companies accountable.

Section II. Assessing Plans to Fight Digital Misinformation

A. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Plan

In October 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a plan to combat digital misinformation. The plan urges social media companies to alert users affected by disinformation campaigns, ban accounts that knowingly disseminate false information, open up data to researchers, and share information about algorithms. Warren also controversially called for “criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating false information about when and how to vote in U.S. elections”, noting the suppression turnout among key voters is a particularly invidious tactic of shadow campaigns.

Immediately, conservatives denounced the plan as unconstitutional. Editor of the National Review Charles Cooke opined that the plan amounts to a repeal of the First Amendment. This criticism has no basis in law. The civil and criminal sanctions in Warren’s plan are narrowly tailored to address the spread of one kind of misinformation: voting requirements and procedures. As recently as 2018, a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court wrote in dicta, “We do not doubt that the State may prohibit messages intended to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures.” Indeed, states like Virginia, Illinois, and Minnesota have statutes on the books outlawing a person from knowing deceiving another person about election information.

B. Senator Josh Hawley’s Plan

C. Alternatives

I. How Social Media Threatens Democracy

A: The "Post-Truth" Era

The Oxford English Dictionary named “post-truth” the word of the year for 2016, defining it as, “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” 2016 was the year an outsider candidate from reality television, armed with traditional and modern tools of communication, capitalized on anti-elite fervor to fuel a successful White House run built on a foundation of falsehoods. Outgoing President Barack Obama reflected on the campaign and its results, saying, “Trump understands the new ecosystem, in which facts and truth don’t matter.” Social media defines that ecosystem and is central to the undermining of truth in journalism and politics.

The democratization of information on the internet has empowered individuals to seek out content that reaffirms their own views. Social media users, including leaders at the highest levels, can directly communicate to millions, bypassing legacy media organizations that once served as gatekeepers. On social media, a trained journalist or climate scientist is not at the ready on a split screen to challenge a politician who makes grossly untrue statements. An established, credentialed editor-in-chief is not overseeing everything that is published on Facebook or Twitter. Instead of preventing falsehoods from entering the national conversation or presenting newsworthy statements through a critical lens, gatekeepers find themselves defending facts from a popular revolt. The result is an environment Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus described as “the conjunction of a president unconstrained by facts with a media environment both siloed into partisan echo chambers and polluted by fake news.”

According to a BuzzFeed News analysis, in the final months of the 2016 election, hoax election stories -- almost entirely supporting Donald Trump and opposing Hillary Clinton -- outperformed actual news on social media. The 20 top-performing false election stories generated nearly 9 million engagements, far more than the 7.3 million earned by actual news. The top stories fabricated Pope Francis’ endorsement of Donald Trump and the sale of weapons from Hillary Clinton to the Islamic State.

B: Cambridge Analytica and the Power of Microtargeting

Section II. Assessing Senator Warren's Plan to Fight Digital Misinformation

A. The Plan

B. First Amendment Concerns

C.

Assessing Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Fight Digital Misinformation

-- By MartinMcSherry - 12 Mar 2020

Section I: How Social Media Threatens Democracy

Subsection A: The "Post-Truth" Era

Subsub 1

Subsection B: Cambridge Analytica and the Power of Microtargeting

Subsub 1

Subsub 2

Section II: Senator Warren's Plan to Fight Digital Misinformation

Subsection A:

Subsection B

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