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Widespread allegations that President-elect Joe Biden “stole” the election are now tinged with unsubstantiated claims that the media is rescinating its appeals to certain states or changing its projections in ways that disadvantage Biden. These claims are false. But they continue to circulate virally on social media and show how, for online platforms, the problem of misinformation is as serious as ever.
In one prominent example, a YouTube video mistakenly claiming that Joe Biden is “losing” his status as president-elect of the United States has racked up more than a million views as of Tuesday afternoon and has been widely shared among groups of High-performing Facebook dedicated to politics. .
The main source cited by the video is a misinformed and now deleted tweet by Trump aide Pam Bondi, who falsely claimed that the RealClearPolitics website had reversed its projection that Biden had won the Pennsylvania Electoral College votes. That claim has also been echoed by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, among others.
But RealClearPolitics co-founder Tom Bevan publicly denied the claim Monday night.
Major outlets like CNN, NBC News, Associated Press and Fox News have cast Biden as the winner in Pennsylvania, and none are backing down on that call. There is also no indication that Trump’s legal challenges could legitimately threaten Biden’s leadership there, which according to CNN’s tally was more than 47,000 votes as of Tuesday afternoon, about 87 times larger than the 537 votes that separated Biden. George W. Bush and Al. Gore in Florida in 2000, and it’s growing.
Yet despite a contextual tag on YouTube that says the AP has cast Biden as the winner of the presidency, the video continues to spread largely unchecked on the platform. It has also been posted numerous times in what Facebook data shows is currently the most politically engaged group on its platform.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video. YouTube told CNN Business that the video does not violate its community guidelines, which simply prohibit misleading content about how to vote, not about election results or vote counting.
“Search results and related videos, including this video, show a dashboard noting that the AP has called the presidential race for Joe Biden and that strong safeguards help ensure the integrity of the elections and the results. “YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said. it said in a statement. “We continue to generate authoritative content in search results and recommendations, including search queries related to this topic, and general election-related queries are emerging from authoritative news sources such as ABC News and CNBC.”
Elsewhere, other social media users have falsely claimed that CNN has changed its projections for Georgia and Arizona in ways that benefit Trump. In fact, at no point did CNN project a 2020 presidential winner in either state, although some other outlets, including AP and Fox News, have called Biden the winner in Arizona.
The flow of misinformation continues despite some efforts by tech platforms to stem the tide. In recent days, Facebook has removed several pages linked to former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon for spreading misinformation. The takedown affected at least seven pages with more than 2.45 million combined followers, according to Avaaz, an activist group that flagged the network on Facebook on Friday. That removal included pages under the names Conservative Values, The Undefeated, We Build the Wall and Trump at War, which Avaaz said shared false information about the election with the slogan “Stop the Steal.” The shootdown was first reported by The Washington Post.
“We have removed various activity groups for using inauthentic behavioral tactics to artificially increase the number of people who viewed their content,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement. The company confirmed that it reduced the layout of Bannon’s page, but did not remove it, after it tried to make some of its content appear more popular than it actually was.
But false and misleading claims keep piling up on social media almost faster than businesses can tackle.
The misinformation is being driven by social media influencers and superusers, said Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security director and a Stanford University security expert. “There is a relatively small number of people with a large following who have the ability to find a narrative somewhere, bring it out of the dark (a tweet, a photo, a video) and strengthen it in these narratives,” Stamos said in a conference call. on Tuesday hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory.
Security and disinformation researchers warn of the long-term consequences of allowing false claims to spread.
“Failure to remove the posts increases the likelihood that those who read the posts will commit violence,” he added.
But some experts caution that for some Internet users, it may already be too late.
“What I predict we will continue to see is the consolidation around a couple of narratives that have more staying power that fit this false meta-narrative of voter fraud that continues and persists,” said Kate Starbird, associate professor at the University of Washington. “These will persist for years or even decades, unfortunately, because people are highly motivated both to participate in them and to believe them.”
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