Spandana Singh

Since 2020, misinformation and disinformation related to election and voter suppression have continued to spread at a growing rate across online platforms. While internet platforms ramped up attempts to combat such information during the 2020 elections, many of these efforts appear to have been temporary measures. In anticipation of the 2022 US midterm elections, this report evaluates how online platforms are combating misleading election information against a selection of recommendations made by the Open Technology Institute in 2020.

Today, transparency reporting on issues such as government requests for user data is considered an industry-wide best practice for technology and telecommunications companies. Over the past few years, internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have also begun publishing transparency reports that outline how they are enforcing their own content policies and rules. This reporting has been expanded to include a number of metrics and categories of content that are unique to these types of platforms.

Disruptions and threats to an individual’s digital security have profound impacts on that individual’s willingness to use technology—a particularly big problem when you consider just how much technology permeates people’s everyday lives.

As the internet has become an increasingly important tool for free expression around the world, major platforms and networks that carry that expression have assumed the role of speech gatekeepers, often removing or blocking users' content for various legal or policy reasons. Currently, some internet and telecommunications companies disclose some data on how much content they are removing and why in their transparency reports.

David Kaye, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, issued a call for comments on content regulation in the digital age. The call aimed to collect information from states, companies, and civil society organizations on content regulation processes, including relevant legislative measures, internal and external policies, and the challenges and successes of these procedures.