Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash
With misinformation spreading faster than a virus in a ball pit, online communities are having to devote more and more time to finding that misinformation and figuring out what to do with it. Some sites, like Facebook, have become breeding grounds for misinformation and no amount of mitigation measures have seemed to stop that. Other sites like Parler promise that absolutely no content will be removed unless it’s from a terrorist, child porn, or a copyright violation. So what is a sensible misinformation policy in 2023? To answer that, I’m looking at two online communities that vividly illustrate the need for effective misinformation policies: Twitter and, that’s right, Pinterest.
When I think of Pinterest, I think of three things: ideas for kids’ birthday parties, farmhouse chic decor, and an almost superhuman dedication to fighting misinformation. Pinterest seriously does no play around with misinformation. The first sentence in their policy makes that incredibly clear:
Pinterest isn’t a place for misinformation, disinformation, mal-information or the individuals or groups spreading or creating it.
Pinterest misinformation policy, 4/16/23
This doesn’t leave as much room for interpretation as say Facebook, who may suppress certain controversial topics or posts, but doesn’t outright remove content unless its back is against the wall.
Additionally, Pinterest has specific policies for voting, health, and (most recently) climate misinformation. This all suggests that not only is Pinterest serious about fighting misinformation on its platform, but it has a plan and it’s still evolving it.
Pinning Down The Hammer
Let’s look at one case of Pinterest taking action against an offender: LiveAction, a pro-life non-profit that aims to outlaw abortion, found their site was blacklisted by Pinterest in June of 2019. More specifically, LiveAction.org had been added to a list of pornographic websites. This meant that Pinners (Pinterest’s term for users) could no longer Pin (Pinterest’s term for bookmark) anything from LiveAction to their Boards (Pinterest’s term for homepage). When LiveAction discovered this, they reached out to Pinterest to ask what had prompted the blacklisting. Pinterest’s response was to let them know they messed up.
Before one jumps to conclusions about Pinterest’s idealogical interests and agenda, it’s worth noting that LiveAction has been found time and again to use misinformation as a means of moving people to act on their behalf. That said, Pinterest has policies against denying climate science and misrepresenting vaccine info, and even banned weight loss ads in 2021 to promote body positivity, all classically liberal moves. Still, Pinterest’s user base remains evenly split liberal/conservative.
Twitter Then
Hoo boy, Twitter. To understand the misinformation picture on Twitter, one must look at the defining moment on the bird app’s TL, Elon Musk’s acquisition for $43 billion in October 2022. While a new CEO always means new rules, the degree to which Musk mangled Twitter into something different is really unlike any that came before.
In analyzing Twitter’s misinformation policies, let’s start in the pre-Musk era, when things were simpler. Perhaps one of the most layered approaches to fighting misinformation, Twitter’s process involved labeling content and offering context when a tweet (Twitter’s term for — oh, you get it) contained misleading info, incorrect info, or something that just needed additional context. This approach grew exponentially during Donald Trump’s presidency, when he would repeatedly tweet things that were either outright false, harmful, or just misleading. The Capitol riot of January 6th, 2021 eventually led to his permanent (-ish) ban.
Twitter Now
One of the reasons Elon Musk cited for buying Twitter in 2022 was to “help humanity.” He saw it as a great opportunity to open up free speech, an objective he believed the current ownership didn’t share. He wanted to greatly reduce the moderation and fight back against “woke.”
One of the first things he did was end Twitter’s policing of COVID-19 information. Twitter had previously taken steps to fight the spread of COVID vaccine misinformation, a move that Musk saw as anti-free speech. In removing this policy, he has opened the floodgates for dubious claims about COVID vaccines, death rates, and the origins of the virus, sometimes even making those claims himself.
The Takeaway
Ultimately, every platform needs a misinformation policy that aligns with what they’re trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to keep your Pinners safe, stomp out any sign of misinformation and never look back. If you’re a bit more loosey-goosey with facts maybe just forgo a policy altogether like Truth Social did (not a joke, there is literally no policy). Perhaps the toughest scenario to navigate (as a platform) is one where you had sensible policies in place but the self-described Chief Twit just tossed them out.
Good luck out there.