Here’s How Social Media Giants—Including Twitter And Meta—Are Bracing For Midterm Misinformation

All major social media platforms have outlined plans to tackle misinformation around the midterm election and its immediate aftermath, but questions will remain about their effectiveness and the ability of these platforms to adequately implement these measures after struggling to do so during the 2020 elections.

All eyes will be on Twitter after it was recently acquired by billionaire and self-styled “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk. While Twitter continues to have policies in place to deal with election misinformation, there have been concerns about its ability to enforce these policies as it is set to lose nearly half of its workforce in a mass layoff on Friday. Earlier this week, Twitter’s Head of Safety and Integrity Yoel Roth acknowledged that the platform had seen a brief surge in hateful content after being acquired by Musk, but attributed most of these issues to a small number of troll accounts.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that most members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team have been restricted from accessing the platform’s internal moderation tools. In addition to this, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, faced criticism over the weekend after he tweeted out an unfounded conspiracy theory about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Musk, who has engaged in a war of words with progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), responded to a clip of the congresswoman accusing Musk of restricting her Twitter account by writing “What can I say? It was a naked abuse of power.” MORE