The country’s biggest social media companies have spent years trying to avoid repeating their worst mistakes of a 2016 election marred by foreign interference online. But Election Day and the immediate aftermath are the real test, and there’s still plenty of ways to fail.
The companies aren’t likely to get fooled again by moves like the Facebook ads that were infamously paid for in Russian rubles. But as voting begins, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others are still very worried about how Election Day will play out online. And (spoiler alert) much of it has to do with Americans behaving badly.
That’s why Chris Krebs, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, said in a YouTube video that served as his closing pitch to the country, “the last line of defense in election security is you, the American voter.”
The companies all say they’ve taken major steps to protect the election: “Since 2016, we’ve made substantial investments, built more teams and have worked with experts and policymakers to focus our efforts in the right places,” wrote Facebook in a company blog post. “Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation,” wrote Twitter. “In the many months leading up to Election Day, we have consistently focused our efforts on helping voters, protecting our platforms from abuse, and equipping campaigns,” wrote Google.
Here, exactly, is what the big tech companies have tried to prepare for — and what could still go horribly wrong.
Good people spreading suspect stories
The issue: With Americans keyed into this wild election’s every twist and turn, tech companies worry that they’re primed for amplification — where well-meaning users quickly spread unvetted information and even outright falsehoods. It’s a worry shared by others. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted Monday that with “our adversaries” primed to take advantage of the volatility surrounding the election, “Don’t make their jobs any easier.”
Wikileaks’ distribution of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s stolen Gmail messages quickly roiled the 2016 presidential contest, even though security experts still aren’t sure if they were all real. The media and social media users couldn’t help but dive into the cache, and, as Mark Twain once said. “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” (Actually, it wasn’t Twain. But people still believe it is.)
What their plan is: Pulling lessons from everything from elections in India to coronavirus misinformation, the companies have been trying out myriad ways to stop the spread of suspect claims. Facebook, for example, sometimes slows out the distribution of stories until third-party fact-checkers can vet them, and has restricted users of its Messenger app to forwarding messages to just five accounts at a time. Twitter, for its part, attaches warning labels on problematic tweets, and has tried more subtle tweaks, too. Right now, if you retweet anything, you’ll be prompted to add your own commentary.
What could go horribly wrong: The social companies are already under enormous pressure for making content calls that can seem inconsistent and opaque, as with Twitter’s messy mid-October reversal of its blocking of a New York Post story on Hunter Biden. Silencing Americans talking about their own election, especially on Election Day, is tremendously fraught, and would likely mean they’d face calls to appear on Capitol Hill before the election had even cooled off.
And it would only exacerbate the rift the companies already have with Republicans. Presidential son Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted Sunday that with, as he sees it, “Big Tech” trying to put the kibosh on negative stories about Joe Biden while amplifying negative stories about Trump, “[M]ake no mistake your first amendment rights are on the table this election.”
Hearing “fire!” in a crowded theater
The issue: Silicon Valley security experts have taken to warning about the possibility of “perception hacking,” where bad actors convince Americans they’ve messed with the election — without having to actually do the hard work of manipulating votes.
We’ve already seen signs of that in recent days. For a short while last week, the Trump campaign’s website was defaced with a warning that the hackers had evidence “proving” the president’s cooperation with election-manipulating foreign actors. “[T]he US citizens have no choice,” read the dire note. And threatening emails recently traced to Iran gloated that bad actors had gotten inside the U.S.’s “entire voting infrastructure.” Both were designed to go viral, but weren’t backed by any evidence of meaningful interference.
What their plan is: The social platforms are betting that their misinformation policies help contain rumors of election interference, including what’s come to be called “pre-bunking,” or pre-emptively posting what they judge to be solid information on contested topics.
They are also relying on the American public to be a bit better informed and savvier than it was in 2016. Facebook’s head of security policy, Tweeted Nathaniel Gleicher, tweeted: “perception hacks are designed to trick us into thinking there has been widespread manipulation when there hasn't. The threat actors will keep trying, but we don't have to take the bait!”
What could go horribly wrong: Some critics argue that tech companies warning the public to stay calm is a dodge and a distraction from damage done by their platforms.
“‘Perception hack’ is the new denialist idea...being deployed by tech companies to insist that their products only have good effects,” tweeted David Golumbia, an English professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in digital studies.
Still, the risk is real, and if enemies of American democracy can cause mass destabilization without putting in much time or effort, it could encourage an escalation of guerilla information warfare. If just about anybody can throw the country into chaos, it’ll only light fire under the idea that Facebook, Twitter, and perhaps other social platforms are too big, too ungovernable, to exist (a danger of its own to the companies, who are fighting significant antitrust battles in Washington).
Danger lurking in the internet’s dark corners
The issue: The social platforms will be able to see a lot that happens on Election Day, but not everything. The alleged kidnapping plot against Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced in October was a reminder of how nefarious activities can dwell in relative obscurity online and only occasionally pop up on mainstream social media sites. The plotters there mostly organized via encrypted messages and other means, according to the legal complaint against them, and only briefly mentioned what they were up to on Facebook.
Facebook said at the time that the company had proactively offered help to the FBI in the Whitmer case. But it was clear that Facebook played only a role in a much bigger effort to catch the bad guys.
What their plan is: After the role of misinformation in the 2016 election became clear, behind the scenes the national security world and Silicon Valley blamed each other. Law enforcement argued that the tech industry was shirking responsibility. The tech industry grumbled that they were thrown under the bus for government’s failings.
Companies like Facebook and Twitter and agencies like CISA and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force have tried in the years since to build bridges, and have even jointly scenario-planned for what could go wrong Tuesday night. The plans are in place for the companies and government to be in close contact Tuesday, joined through a command center operated by the Department of Homeland Security. That’s particularly striking in an industry where these big players are often, in the normal course of business, incredibly competitive.
“We’ll remain in constant contact throughout the week — this is a joint effort in response to a shared threat, and we are committed to doing our part,” said Twitter in a statement to POLITICO.
What could go horribly wrong: The companies have in recent months trumpeted their better coordination as a sign of their commitments to securing the democratic process. But this is game day. If things go wildly wrong, those relationships will be seriously tested. And if they fail, it could destroy hope that Silicon Valley and the government can work together on election protection — undermining one of the companies’ biggest arguments for why they can be trusted.
Ads and ad blackouts
The issue: Political ads on social media were a favorite tactic of Russian disinformation artists in 2016, used to exploit racial tensions and other fissures in American society. The online platforms have tried to get a handle on those powerful paid spots, but they’ve proven difficult to police — especially as trolls and others have gotten smarter about how to route around the platforms’ restrictions.
What their plan is: Twitter went the nuclear route last year, banning political ads across the board. Facebook has long taken a much more hands-off approach, but it, too, has moved to clamp down. It recently banned new political ads for the week ahead of Election Day and announced that it would temporarily halt a wide swath of politics-related spots after the polls close Tuesday night. Google has said it will do something similar, prohibiting political ads for at least following the election, including on its YouTube platform.
What could go horribly wrong: The companies are finding out ad bans are much easier in theory than practice. For one thing, what counts as a “political” spot can be difficult to judge. For another, the companies are leaning on vetting processes they’ve yet to test in a U.S. election.
The immediate risk: the companies’ handling of ads could hurt particular candidates or parties. Democrats are already complaining that their ads are getting stuck in Facebook’s queue. Megan Clasen, an adviser for paid media on the Biden campaign, tweeted Friday, “we are just a few days from the election & thousands of pre-approved Biden ads are still not live on Facebook.” Facebook acknowledged the election-week troubles with its ad system, pinning them on technical flaws while insisting that no “partisan consideration” had been at play.
The temporary nature of some ad bans create another danger for the companies. Facebook and Google will decide to lift their ad bans at some point, and their timing will no doubt anger those who think it’s too soon or too late, creating one more political headache waiting for them after Election Day.
Who won? Are you sure?
The issue: One real worry of election security experts: candidates taking advantage of the uncertainty around election results to prematurely declare themselves the winner. In some cases, the thinking goes, supporters might see that victory claims circulating and believe that they’re true. In others they might know the claims to be false but repeat them anyway in a bid to push the narrative that their candidate has won.
There’s real worry that Trump himself is planning to pronounce himself the victor on Tuesday night, whether or not the votes are in — so much so that he was forced to deny it while campaigning in North Carolina on Sunday.
What their plan is: Facebook and Twitter both say they’re relying on professional shot callers to say who’s won. Facebook is partnering with Reuters and a consortium of networks for its official results, and Twitter is drawing on a range of news outlets, including the AP and CNN. Candidate posts that declare victory too early (or wrongly) will, the companies say, get labeled. And that goes for more than just the presidency; Twitter announced Monday that they will also be prioritizing “other highly contested races where there may be significant issues with misleading information.”
The companies have stressed in recent weeks that so-called premature declarations are among their biggest worries, and that they’re ready to confront them head on. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing last week that his company was prepared to roll out the big guns: if a high-profile candidate says they’ve won before they have, Facebook’s prepared to put a banner saying otherwise “at the top of the Facebook app for everyone who signs-in in the U.S.”
What could go horribly wrong: Back in the 2000 election, there was enormous confusion about who had won the presidency, from the moment that Al Gore retracted his concession over the Florida vote count to when George W. Bush was named the winner five weeks later.
The country still hasn’t really healed from that situation — including enduring hard feelings, particularly among Democrats, over the Supreme Court’s role in deciding the contest. But that was a very different information landscape. Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school. Twitter was years from being created. Picture five weeks of a fought-over election now fed through the social-media grinder. That could create fissures in the United States impossible to repair even after inauguration day.
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November 03, 2020 at 04:30PM
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