September 5, 2023 // Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy here.

Image from Project Liberty

Election integrity in the digital age

There will be 65 national elections globally across 54 countries in 2024 alone—impacting half of the global population. In essence, 2024 will be the year of elections, as there won’t be that many elections in one year again until 2048.  

From a presidential election in the US to elections in India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Taiwan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the European Parliament, 2024 will put tech platforms—big and small—to the test in their efforts to support free and fair elections.

Last month, The Washington Post chronicled how social media companies have been recently retreating from their role as watchdogs against political misinformation on their platforms, a move that has big implications for future elections. A number of factors are fueling this change in policy—from layoffs in the tech sector to legal battles with the Biden administration to changes in internal policies.

This week we’re exploring tech platforms and election integrity: the trends, the issues, the range of possible solutions for tech platforms, and how you, the reader (and voter), can engage in an upcoming Project Liberty online event on the topic. Let’s dive in.

//

There will be 65 national elections globally across 54 countries in 2024.

//

// Tech platforms: enabling the democratic process

While tech platforms vary in size, design, and audience, most provide the following functions to a democracy:

• Help people register to vote (in recent years Snapchat has become more serious about its voter registration efforts).
• Provide authoritative information about elections, the election process, and guidelines for voters.
• Give voice to and mobilize citizens and groups, as we saw in how tech platforms galvanized the Arab Spring democracy movement in 2010.
• Distribute political ads and raise awareness about candidates—even if those candidates had been previously banned (of note, X/Twitter just announced that it would once again allow political ads on its platform. YouTube announced earlier this year that it will stop removing false claims about 2020 election fraud).
• Provide spaces for fact-checking and fighting misinformation (platforms like Meta and X have rolled out misinformation warning labels, though recently X has reversed policies to fight misinformation).

// Tech platforms: hindering the democratic process

In the last 10 years, platforms (like Facebook, YouTube, and X) that haven’t adequately prepared and built robust elections programs have found themselves implicated in harming democracies and elections. 

• Exacerbating polarization: A meta-analysis of academic research by Brookings in 2021 found that while tech platforms are not the root of political polarization in the US, they can and do exacerbate it. Research from the organization More in Common identified a perception gap—in part caused by social media—where Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents hold views they consider “extreme” as is actually the case.
• Spreading misinformation: Platforms can drive the rapid spread of misinformation through the ways their algorithms reward engagement and amplify divisive content. In 2018, researchers discovered how on Twitter, false information spread faster than true information. Experts also predict that artificial intelligence will lead to even more misinformation, and there is threat of foreign actors leveraging AI to generate misinformation that is corrosive to the integrity of democratic processes.
• Election & voter interference: Increasingly, governments are leveraging social media platforms to:
  • Enable digital election interference tactics like manipulating online discussions to favor certain political parties, which took place in 24 countries in 2022 alone—from Brazil to India to the Philippines.
  • Restrict access to certain sites and cut off access, which showed up in places like Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Egypt, and Mexico.
  • Reinforce legal measures when authorities punish opponents of a regime and chill political expression, occurring in places like Turkey and Thailand.

// Tech companies need an elections program

Following the 2016 election, many platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter started to grow teams specifically focused on tackling the election integrity issues on their platforms. Now, not only do those platforms need to continue that work (even while layoffs reduce the ranks of election integrity and content moderation teams), but now many newer platforms such as TikTok, Discord, and Telegram are also being used by candidates, political parties, and voters.

Tech platforms need an elections program, according to Project Liberty Alliance member Integrity Institute, a member-powered nonprofit think tank that advances the theory and practice of protecting the social internet.

An elections program is a series of best practices for tech companies to help better support healthy elections on their platforms. With more elections on the horizon and increasing legal, compliance, and reputational risks to platforms, it’s more important than ever for tech companies to ensure their platforms are ready. 

The Integrity Institute and its members have issued an elections integrity best practices guide to do just that. The guide is aimed at tech platforms and includes recommendations, product approaches, operational processes, existing precedents, and examples about the ways tech platforms can advance the integrity of elections.

On September 12th from 12pm - 1pm ET, Project Liberty and Integrity Institute are hosting a virtual event to explore election integrity in the digital age, why political campaigns are increasingly adopting digital-first strategies, and specifically what platforms can do. Integrity Institute's Senior Advisor, Katie Harbath will share more about the Institute’s guide for election integrity. To register, send an email to be added to the program.

// The way forward

The integrity of upcoming elections will require more than just new elections programs at tech platforms. In the digital age, it will require everything from protecting journalists (as Maria Ressa spoke about at Unfinished Live last year) to new policies that police misinformation in digital spaces to ensuring free and fair elections at every level of government. From the Integrity Institute's guide on best practices for tech companies to Ressa's 10-point plan aimed at governments, the solutions are known and the roadmaps are clear. It's now up to us to put them into practice.

Other notable headlines

// 🏛 Meta isn’t enforcing its own political ads policy, according to an article in WIRED. A nonprofit watchdog group has found that the right-wing group PragerU has pushed out more than 100 political ads on Facebook and Instagram.

// 🏗 An interview with Project Liberty and Wendy Seltzer (advisor to DSNP) in CircleID explored the potential to unbundle the social media stack with decentralized protocols.

// 🤖 An article in The Economist reported how in the context of upcoming elections, disinformation will become easier to produce, but it matters less than you might think.

// 🇦🇱 A deep-dive article in Coda explored how TikTok enabled a human-trafficking pipeline from Albania to the UK.

// 📱 The New York Times featured how Apple is caught in the tension between safety and privacy in monitoring child sex abuse. An advocacy group is starting a $2 million campaign calling for the company to better police materials.

// 🇰🇭 Meta has rejected its own oversight board’s request to suspend the account of Cambodia’s leader, who is blamed with inciting violence on the platform, according to the Washington Post.

// 🇿🇦 Free AI tools like ChatGPT are killing South Africa’s web designer job market and reducing salaries, according to an article in Rest of the World.

Partner news & opportunities

/ Project Liberty is a advancing responsible development of the internet, designed and governed for the common good. /

Thank you for reading.