The Crisis Facing Efforts to Counter Election Disinformation
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Over the course of the last two presidential elections, efforts by social media platforms and independent researchers to prevent falsehoods from spreading about election integrity have become increasingly central to civic health. But the warning signs are flashing as we head into 2024. And platforms are arguably in a worse position to counter falsehoods today than they were in 2020.
How could this be? On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Dean Jackson, who previously sat down with the Lawfare Podcast to discuss his work as a staffer on the Jan. 6 committee. He worked with the Center on Democracy and Technology to put out a new report on the challenges facing efforts to prevent the spread of election disinformation. They talked through the political, legal, and economic pressures that are making this work increasingly difficult—and what it means for 2024.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair, that's patreon.com slash |
| 0:16.9 | LawFair. Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.7 | Those researchers find themselves in the political crosshairs in a way that they were not before, |
| 0:38.3 | and we are going to see how that field now more mature, but also under more duress, |
| 0:45.0 | performs in 2024, when companies have taken the step of pulling back some of the resources they |
| 0:50.3 | had previously, previously devoted to it. And not just resources, right? Because the platforms will |
| 0:54.7 | often argue like, well, we're still devoting a lot of time and energy and resources to elections, |
| 0:59.0 | but they're also making policy changes like allowing users to opt out of seeing fact checks |
| 1:04.3 | on content, right? And these are changes that I think are exposing us to a disinformation risk |
| 1:10.7 | that we were much more attuned to in 2020. |
| 1:14.0 | I'm Quintituristic, senior editor at LawFair, and this is the LawFair podcast, October 20th, |
| 1:21.2 | 2023. Today, we're bringing you an episode of Arbiter's of Truth, our series on the |
| 1:27.1 | information ecosystem. Over the course of the last two presidential elections, efforts by |
| 1:33.2 | social media platforms and independent researchers to prevent falsehoods from spreading |
| 1:37.9 | but election integrity have become increasingly central to civic health. |
| 1:42.9 | But the warning signs are flashing as we head into 2024, and platforms are arguably in a |
| 1:48.9 | worse position to counter falsehoods today than they were in 2020. How could this be? |
| 1:55.7 | To discuss, I sat down with Dean Jackson, who previously joined the LawFair podcast to discuss |
| 2:01.3 | his work as a staffer on the January 6th committee. He recently worked with the Center on Democracy |
| 2:06.6 | and Technology to ped out a new report on the challenges facing efforts to prevent the spread |
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