◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek July 27, 202032
● Socialmediasitesandcivil-rightsgroupsarebracingfora tideofmisleadingpostsComing to Your Timeline:
Voter Disinformation
Three daysbeforethe Nov.6,2018, midterm
elections, conservative pundit Ann Coulter
sent a tweet to her 2.1 million followers.
“CONSERVATIVES!RemembertovoteNov6!”she
wrote.“Liberals:Yourpollingdayis Nov7.”
Thetweetwasnojoke,atleastnottoTwitter
Inc.,whichremoved itfor violatingitspolicy
againstspreadingvotingmisinformation.Butthe
damagewasdone:A callfroma verified,promi-
nentAmericancitizentokeepDemocratsfromthe
pollscirculatedforhoursbeforeTwitterwasable
tostopit.That’sjustoneexampleofvotersuppres-
sioneffortsthatcivicgroupsworrywillfloodsocial
mediasitesbeforetheNov.3 presidentialelection
anddecreaseenthusiasm,whichcouldalreadybe
dampened by pandemic fears and racial tensions.
Tech giants Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s
YouTube have been ramping up efforts to fight mis-
information on where, when, and how to vote.
Twitter bars election intimidation tweets, such as
attempting to scare voters into thinking the police
are monitoring polling sites. On July 21, Twitter
said it would take more aggressive action against
accounts linked to QAnon, a far-right conspiracy
group that’s tried to influence elections in the past.THEBOTTOMLINE AsmoreAmericanfamiliesconsiderhome
schoolingbecauseofCovid-19,advocatesseea politicalwindowto
increasegovernmentsupportforhomeschoolers.likewise sees home schooling as a way to under-
cut public education. “DeVos’ craven attempts to
divide and privatize would be laughable if the stakes
weren’t so high,” Weingarten said in a statement.
Diane Ravitch, president of the Network for
Public Education, an advocacy group championing
public schools, is sympathetic to families that might
decide on home schooling in the fall. “They won’t do
it happily. They want real teachers, but they don’t
want their children at risk,” she says. When Covid-19
is no longer a threat, Ravitch predicts parents who
opted out will return their kids to public schools.
“This isn’t going to be a permanent way of life.”
But other experts think the overlap we’re now
seeing between remote schooling and home edu-
cation will likely persist after the pandemic ends.▼Numberofcountries
wheregovernmentand
politicalpartyactors
useorganizedsocial
mediamanipulation
campaigns201760300
2018 2019Travis Pillow is the editorial director at the Center
on Reinventing Public Education, a research center
based at the University of Washington Bothell. “The
twin financial and public-health pressures of Covid
appear to be accelerating the blurring of the lines
between public education and home schooling that
was already picking up steam before the pandemic,”
he says. For Pillow, this would be a good thing—one
that could lead to improvements and make home
schooling more accessible. “We would welcome
new entrants into this space,” he says, “because
existing outcomes in full-time online learning have
been pretty dismal.” �Rachel M. CohenFacebookInc.is buildinga speciallandingpage
withelectioninformationthatit willattachtovote-
related posts. Google has similar policies for its ads
and YouTube content. But civil-rights groups and
election experts say tech companies aren’t keep-
ing up with the increasingly sophisticated ways that
voter suppression messages flourish.
Political operatives and pundits like Coulter, who
didn’t respond to requests for comment, have also
learned that persuading people to stay home on
Election Day is easier than trying to change minds
about which candidate to back. “If you can shift just
a few of those people in the states that matter” to
sit out, then it could help a candidate carry a state,
says Sandra Matz, an associate business professor
at Columbia University who’s studied ad targeting.
The pressure on social media companies to act
is growing: In some states, voter registration dead-
lines are 10 weeks away. Absentee and mail-in ballots
will start arriving in mailboxes even earlier in swing
states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Tech companies “have to be able to get this
right in the next several weeks,” says Vanita Gupta,
president of the Leadership Conference on Civil &
Human Rights. “The misinformation efforts are