This election cycle will be the first exposed to generative artificial intelligence—the technology behind popular apps like ChatGPT that enables even non-experts to create fake, but realistic-looking text, video, and audio perfectly suited for political manipulation. At the same time, a number of the major social-media companies have retreated from some of their prior commitments to promote “election integrity.” The November election is also the first that will register the impact of the enormous popularity of TikTok, which uses a recommendation algorithm that some experts believe is particularly suited to spreading misinformation.
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Let’s start with the rise of generative AI, which allows virtually anyone to produce persuasive text, imagery, or sound based on relatively simple natural-language prompts. In January, Facebook circulated a fake
The U.S. is not alone on this score. Last September, an audio clip posted on Facebook just two days before Slovakia’s national election for prime minister appeared to capture the candidate of the pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine Progressive Slovakia Party discussing how to rig the results. The
Analysts are struggling to keep up with the possibilities. A
But AI is far from the whole story. The threat of artificially generated disinformation is made all the more daunting by a more familiar technology: social media.
Despite the confusion and violence caused by Trump’s attempt to undermine the 2020 election result and the threat of similar volatility this year, major platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and, most dramatically, X have backed away from some of their past election-integrity policies, according to a new
Any discussion of backsliding necessarily begins with X, which Elon Musk acquired in October 2022. Competition from Meta’s new Threads app, as well as Musk-related controversies, have
Following hiring binges during the COVID-19 pandemic, other social media companies also have executed mass layoffs, with a number of them reducing their “trust and safety” teams—the people who craft and enforce content policies.
For the 2020 election, Meta built a 300-person unit dedicated to election integrity. But despite the chaos that erupted when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the company subsequently
Meta, to its credit, still funds an industry-leading
Meta has also said that, with the same goal of promoting free-flowing debate, it will
TikTok, which now has upwards of 1 billion average monthly users worldwide and more than 170 million in the U.S. alone, presents new and entirely different challenges. Its connection to Chinese parent corporation ByteDance has led to
But there are also questions about TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, which selects the content presented to users. Other major platforms rely on a “social graph,” which chooses content based on what is shared by the people whom they follow and who follow them. TikTok, by contrast, selects short videos for its “For You” page based on algorithmic recommendations of content from outside of their social network, as well. This difference may help explain why TikTok is so successful at serving up videos that users find novel and compelling.
But the distinction could present a danger during election season, according to
There is still time for platforms to take pre-election precautions. They can impose limits on rampant re-sharing of content, which is one way that misinformation spreads. They can institute “circuit breakers” on certain viral posts to give content moderators an opportunity to determine whether the material is malicious. They can replenish their depleted content moderation teams. And they can remove demonstrably false content from users’ feeds, while retaining a marked, archived copy that’s not sharable but is available as a reference for those who track misinformation.
The social media industry should view these and other protective steps as the cost of doing business responsibly during what is shaping up to be another volatile election season. Inaction could exacerbate a true crisis for U.S. democracy.