It’s just the right time to take care about the upcoming midterm elections. As they are getting closer, the attention of mass media and social media focuses on it, and the latter need to take measures proactively – at least to avoid accusations. Twitter does exactly this by implementing so-called “election integrity features” meant to prevent any abuse.
Primarily, it’s the updated policy (namely Civic Integrity Policy) that enables Twitter to make its rules stricter and find more grounds to prevent misleading information from spreading in form of tweets. These tweets may be labeled as misleading or accompanied by links that offer the readers to stay informed from the official sources.
Twitter representatives say there are various sorts of misleading information that can use Twitter as the platform. Some of those spreading it may discourage people from participating, others provide incorrect information that may lead to votes being dismissed or not delivered at all. And, of course, there will be a lot of misinformation about parties and persons which has to be kept from spreading. In theory, this should lead to less misinformation and more correctly proved statements and calls for action.
The story of Twitter fighting misinformation is rather long. Though the labels were introduced in November 2021, Twitter had been talking measures for long by that moment, removing or restricting tweets and entire accounts or marking them by telling who they are controlled by. In the midterm election, this knowledge will be useful to know who is who and why they are promoting certain narratives.
Do you think the efforts will pay? Will Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other hi-tech giants implement similar policies? Or will Twitter remain the only social media who cares? And… will it care without its own bias? Share your visions with us in the comments!
