“From the time the polls close until the time when every vote is counted and we know the results, we are increasingly vulnerable to information vacuums,” Graham Brookie, the director and managing editor of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told me. “In the absence of the information we’re looking for, a vacuum is created a false information can flood in.”
Government officials were also on alert for adversaries sowing disinformation to undermine confidence in the election process. A delay in results could lead to “disinformation campaigns out there amplifying or pushing false results or outcomes, trying to spin up concern or anxiety,” according to one senior official at the Department of Homeland’s Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
It remains to be seen if Silicon Valley’s preparations for post-election uncertainty will prevail.
A barrage of falsehoods and misinformation swirled on social media on Election Day, especially in critical states such as Pennsylvania. But it’s likely the coming days could be even more challenging for companies and U.S. election officials, as they shift from batting back false claims about the voting process to limiting false claims about the process of actually counting votes.
The longer that takes, the more likely the companies are to make missteps, experts warned.
“All of their decisions about moderating election misinformation rest on judgment calls,” said Mike Ananny, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, told me. “The more calls they have to make, the likely they are to make mistakes and be seen as taking sides.They’ll need to evaluate every new statement about rapidly changing circumstances using policies that weren’t necessarily designed for such speed and uncertainty.”
The top challenge for the companies will be how to handle Trump, whose every word has a major impact on the online discussion. Experts warned that the president may seek to exploit that as he baselessly said continuing vote counting would be “a major fraud on our nation” and promised to bring his case to the Supreme Court.
“The longer this goes on, the worse it will be for the collective American psyche and we know that the President will use it to his advantage as seen by his claims last night regarding the Supreme Court,” said Clint Watts, a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and former FBI special agent.
Twitter and Facebook scrambled overnight to address premature election claims on their services.
Twitter almost immediately put limits on a tweet from Trump early Wednesday morning that suggested Democrats were trying to steal the election.
Facebook followed and added a label that read, “Final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks.”
Trump’s subsequent news conference, where he prematurely declared victory even as ballots in many jurisdictions were being counted, was livestreamed on Twitter. Several pro-Trump partisan outlets wrote articles that repeated his words without context, and mainstream outlets, including the Associated Press, also tweeted the claims in quotes. Twitter told my colleagues that the news conference was not a violation of its policy, and reporting on a news conference is also allowed. Those tweets remained unlabeled.
Facebook applied a label to the version of the video on its service that said, “Final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks after pools close.” Trump also posted it on YouTube, where it had the same label as all videos on the service about election results and redirected people to Googe’ results page.
The steps the companies take in the coming days and weeks could heavily influence efforts to regulate them in Washington.
The night highlighted the amount of power that tech companies exert over how Americans participate in democracy. Any missteps could result in greater political scrutiny, as there’s been a flurry of antitrust activity directed at the companies in Washington.
“The real tragedy in all of this is that such a critical moment in public life is still so heavily influenced by a handful of tech companies and the thin theories of free speech guiding their CEOs,” Ananny said.
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California Uber drivers and other gig workers will remain independent contractors.
The Washington Post projected early today that the state’s Proposition 22 passed with 58 percent of the vote. The initiative, which ensures gig companies don’t have to make workers employees, could shape how tech companies seek to influence labor laws throughout the country.
It’s a historic victory for Uber, Lyft and other tech companies, which spent a historic $200 million on the initiative and used their own apps to drive their position to California voters. The initiative will create limited benefits for drivers, including a wage floor.
The Post has yet to project the outcome of California’s Proposition 24, a key initiative aimed at expanding consumer privacy rights. Early projections showed 56 percent of Californians supporting it, based on votes from 71 percent of precincts. The ballot initiative left privacy advocates split, with groups like the ACLU raising concerns that the law could end up allowing companies to charge users to opt-out of selling their data.
A Georgia Republican who supports QAnon won a seat in Congress.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s victory could test Silicon Valley in new ways, as social networks have promised to crackdown on QAnon-related content. The election could be viewed as a mark of legitimacy by adherents of the theory, who have sought the attention of Republican politicians.
Greene received an endorsement from Trump, who has shared content from QAnon accounts. The president has not disavowed QAnon when asked about it by reporters, claiming he doesn’t know what the theory is. The widely debunked conspiracy theory alleges that Democrats and celebrities commit crimes against children and are a part of a “Deep State” seeking to undermine Trump.
Other members of the Republican party have condemned followers of the conspiracy theory, which the FBI has flagged as a potential terrorist threat.
Senate tech brokers Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) won reelection.
Graham, who beat a well-funded opponent in the most competitive race of his career, could return as chairman of Senate Judiciary if Republicans keep the majority. Earlier this year Graham sponsored the EARN IT Act, which would strip tech companies of liability protections for what users share on their platforms if they don’t follow new rules mandated by a task force created under the bill.
Ranking Senate Intelligence member Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) also won reelection.
Warner, who co-founded the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, has taken a leading role among Democrats in tackling foreign disinformation and pushing legislation that will fund and secure emerging technologies like 5G. Warner could take over as chairman of Intelligence if Democrats take the Senate.
The FBI is investigating a robocall scheme telling voters to stay at home.
The robocalls and texts hit Michigan voters on Tuesday, quickly prompting a response from the state’s governor and attorney general, Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. Voters in Flint, Mich. also received calls inaccurately telling voters to vote on Wednesday, when polls would be closed.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) also said she was investigating the calls.
Data shared with The Washington Post by robocall-blocking app YouMail shows that the campaign began in the summer and carriers investigating the calls believe them to be of foreign origin.
