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Welcome to your U.S. presidential election year, when all kinds of bad actors will flood the internet with election-related disinformation and misinformation aimed at swaying or suppressing your vote in November.
So… what’re you going to do about it?
As EFF’s Corynne McSherry wrote in 2020, online election disinformation is a problem that has had real consequences in the U.S. and all over the world—it has been correlated to ethnic violence in Myanmar and India and to Kenya’s 2017 elections, among other events. Still, election misinformation and disinformation continue to proliferate online and off.
That being said, regulation is not typically an effective or human rights-respecting way to address election misinformation. Even well-meaning efforts to control election misinformation through regulation inevitably end up silencing a range of dissenting voices and hindering the ability to challenge ingrained systems of oppression. Indeed, any content regulation must be scrutinized to avoid inadvertently affecting meaningful expression: Is the approach narrowly tailored or a categorical ban? Does it empower users? Is it transparent? Is it consistent with human rights principles?
While platforms and regulators struggle to get it right, internet users must be vigilant about checking the election information they receive for accuracy. There is help. Nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica published a handy guide about how to tell if what you’re reading is accurate or “fake news.” The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions infographic on How to Spot Fake
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