A Facebook tool that U.S. state election officials are using to monitor and report voting misinformation is offering only a limited view of Facebook activity and doesn’t include some of the major pathways for disinformation, according to a watchdog group’s report.
Facebook reached out to state officials, encouraging them to use CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media metric tool to find voting misinformation in their states around the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
The tracking tool covers public Facebook groups and pages, but doesn’t include posts from most individual users or from private Facebook groups, except for a few verified profiles that includes politicians, celebrities and other high-profile people, according to a report by Tech Transparency Project (TTP).
“When one state official pointed out that election disinformation is often spread by individual users and asked if that data could be added to the dashboard, a Facebook rep rejected the idea, saying it couldn’t because of privacy concerns,” the report said.
Further, Facebook isn’t providing states with all the data they need to spot disinformation, such as voter suppression efforts, ahead of the November election, it added.
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A Facebook product executive had tweeted in July, “While some link posts get a lot of interactions, likes or comments, this content is a tiny % of what most people see on FB. News from these Pages don't represent the most viewed news stories on FB, either.”
According to emails obtained by TPP, Facebook representatives have continued to push CrowdTangle with state election officials this year.
The report further said that in March 2020, Jannelle Watson, another member of Facebook’s politics and government outreach team, wrote to Colorado’s director of elections stating “each state election authority will have their own CrowdTangle account” and offered additional trainings “to teach you how to leverage the full tool.”
Facebook is putting a heavy emphasis on its work with state officials as it highlights its efforts to combat interference with the 2020 vote. CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said that Facebook is partnering with state election authorities to identify and remove false claims about polling conditions, adding the collaboration would continue through the election until we have a clear result.
In addition to this, Facebook recently announced steps to combat election interference such as barring new political ads the week before Election Day, and removing posts from politicians that claim victory before official results are announced.
But according to TTP, Facebook is both leaning on state officials to flag election disinformation and not giving those same officials the data they need to spot the full range of problematic content.
Facebook has not responded to an emailed query at the time of publishing this story.
