The Technology 202: Social networks scramble to address the aftermath of first presidential debate
Tech companies are scrambling to respond to the fallout from one of the most tumultuous debates in modern history.
The social network said it took down the accounts based on intelligence provided by the FBI. Twitter shared some examples of the tweets, which the company said "did not make an impact on the public conversation" and had very low engagement:
The activity indicates that social networks are in for a rocky ride for the remainder of election season.
Tech companies have been revamping their policies and aggressively hiring to address such campaigns in the wake of Russian interference on their platforms surrounding the 2016 election.Yet the companies remain exceptionally vulnerable to a range of evolving and expanding forces that could undermine the election.
The first presidential debate also sparked an onslaught of extremism and misinformation online. And this is just the beginning: The companies have to contend with three more debate nights as well as a high-stakes Election Day and the delicate post-election period, which might be extended this year because of an expected increase in mail-in voting during the election.
Companies are taking some additional steps to prepare for this chaos – but critics say it's still not enough.
Facebook yesterday announced new policies that sought to strengthen its defenses against voter suppression and other election interference on its platform. The company said it would reject ads that seek to delegitimize election outcomes, such as calling a voting method inherently corrupt or using an isolated incident of fraud to dispute election results.
These policies will apply even to ads from politicians, who generally enjoy more lenient policies on Facebook. That's likely to set the social network up for a battle with Trump, who has been making false claims about mail-in voting and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election process.
Yet Facebook's critics noted this wouldn't apply to regular posts that the president or other politicians might share with their millions of followers. From the Biden campaign:
Facebook also reported taking down some extremist and misleading content amid the fallout from the debate.
Brian Fishman, the company's director of counterterrorism and dangerous organizations, reported that the company spotted an increase in activity related to the Proud Boys, including memes that included Trump's "stand back and stand by" language. The company is removing the memes when they are shared to support the Proud Boys or other individuals banned from the service, he said.
Fishman noted the majority of the posts Facebook spotted were condemning the organization and Trump's comments about it. Facebook banned the Proud Boys in October 2018.
However he acknowledged that researchers and journalists were still able to find activity on the platform:
As Facebook and other major social networks crack down on the group, my colleagues Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg report they're shifting toward other channels with less oversight, including the conservative social media site Parler and also channels on the encrypted chat app Telegram.
Facebook also said it would ban ads supporting QAnon and any militarized social movements as it seeks to take a harder line on extremism.
The company also banned misleading ads from Trump that falsely suggested that expanding entry of refugees to the United States would increase the public's exposure to the novel coronavirus. There were more than 30 versions of the ad running on the social network, according to Facebook's ad transparency library. It had gathered between 200,000 and 250,000 impressions.
"We rejected these ads because we don't allow claims that people's physical safety, health, or survival is threatened by people on the basis of their national origin or immigration status," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement.
However Facebook gave some misleading Trump ads a green light, including a series of ads that falsely implied Biden was wearing an earpiece. The social network's third-party fact-checkers debunked and labeled similar claims from other accounts that weren't operated by politicians.
Videos spreading health misinformation about Joe Biden also were widely shared on TikTok.
Even TikTok, which has sought to distance itself from political discourse, was grappling with misinformation after the debate. Four videos that falsely said Biden was wearing a wire during the debate gained more than half a million combined views yesterday on the short-form video sharing service, the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters told Elizabeth.
TikTok told her it would remove the Biden video. The company's policies ban misinformation that "misleads community members about elections or other civic processes."