Friend,

In the past year, online hate and disinformation took center stage as one of the biggest issues of the internet era. In the United States, COVID-19 disinformation has contributed to an already staggering death toll, and now vaccine disinformation is on the rise. Election disinformation (and the politicians who spread it) helped spur an attempted coup and racist attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Disinformation is a huge problem that’s not going away after Inauguration Day. But there are a few things you can do to stop disinformation when you see it online:

• You can flag disinformation when you come across it on social media. The World Health Organization has a good resource for how to flag content on each platform (because the process is different on each one.)
• Don’t share or repeat disinformation, even if only to debunk it. Sharing disinformation will feed the algorithm and spread the false information even further. Check out the infographic below ↓ from ReFrame for more information.
• Share facts from reputable news sources. Spread the word about what’s actually true to reinforce this knowledge with folks who follow you on social media.
• Our friends at Common Cause have a disinformation tip line you can use when simply flagging the content isn’t enough. Using the tip line can help organizations like ours quickly compile data on disinformation that we can use to pressure social-media companies to take action to stop the spread of lies and hate.

Through our work with the Change the Terms coalition,¹ we’ve outlined policies that social-media companies can implement to curb disinformation and the dangerous consequences it can have. Platforms from Facebook to YouTube must do more to stop disinformation and hate online. And there’s a role for each of us to play in making this happen.

Thanks for all you do,

Lucia, Nilda, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net

1. "Recommended Policies," Change the Terms