大象传媒

The challenge for social media companies in trying to deal with misinformation, foreign interference and other threats to the democratic process has never been greater. As the count continues and the result comes down to the wire, the scale of the challenge become clear when President Trump declared, wrongly as no result had been confirmed at that time, that he had won the election just hours after polling stations had closed.

So how have Facebook and Twitter performed in one of the biggest tests they have faced?

Marianna Spring, the 大象传媒's disinformation reporter, explains how the companies have reacted to the president's social media posts. Twitter labelled the president's posts as misleading and limited the distribution, and Facebook made it clear that the result had not been verified. She goes to say that there are still issues of consistency and that social media companies could have done more to tackle disinformation in the early stages of the campaign.

Photo: A man watches President Donald Trump speak from the White House, November 2020 Credit: Getty Images

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