Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Tag: social
Fewer than 1% of parents use social media tools to monitor their children’s accounts, tech companies say
Most parents whose children are on tech platforms such as Snapchat and Discord aren’t using parenting tools the companies designed for them, despite rising concerns around online child safety.
Data shared by Discord and Snapchat, both tech platforms favored by teenagers, after the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January on online child safety shows staggeringly low rates of adoption of platform-provided tools for parents to monitor their children’s social media activity.
On both platforms, fewer than 1% of minors have parents who use tools to monitor them.
During the congressional hearings, the CEOs of some of the biggest social media companies were grilled about the issue of child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Written follow-up questions from various senators were then submitted to each platform, and those platforms sent their responses to the Judiciary Committee in late March.
In their lengthy responses, Discord and Snapchat disclosed how many parents are using their parenting tools. X does not have parenting tools, while TikTok and Meta did not provide detailed data about the use of their parenting tools.
Discord CEO Jason Citron noted that out of more than 150 million global users — with approximately 2.7 million monthly active users under age 18 in the U.S. alone — only 15,000 parents are connected to 15,500 children’s accounts through the Discord Family Center. That means less than 1% of underage Discord users have a parent monitoring their account with the platform’s tools.
Most of the social media platforms called in front of Congress have resources called “parent centers” or “family centers.” These digital centers offer guides and tools to help parents monitor and even control the ability of their children to access certain content or features within each platform. The tools involve syncing a parent’s account with their child’s account. The only platform that doesn’t offer parent-child account syncing is X, formerly called Twitter.
Discord launched its family center in the summer of 2023, soon after NBC News reported an “explosive growth” in child sexual exploitation cases involving the platform. The family center, according to the Senate documents, allows parents to receive insights about the Discord communities and servers that their teen children have joined, the online friends they’ve chatted with on the platform and the amount of time their children spend on it weekly.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wrote that, out of 60 million global daily active users under the age of 18, only 200,000 parents are linked to 400,000 teens’ accounts using Snapchat’s family center. That’s slightly better than Discord’s rate of adoption, but still less than 1% of underage Snapchat users are being monitored by their parents with Snapchat’s tools.
Similar to Discord’s family center, the Snapchat family center allows parents to view and manage how their children are using the platform on a weekly basis, including whether and if they can chat with Snapchat’s “My AI” artificial intelligence chatbot.
Parent and family centers have been some of the favored solutions of social media platforms to escalating concerns about child safety. Many lawmakers and parents have pushed for harder regulation of social media platforms that would force the companies to limit capabilities for minors or set default settings for minors as more restrictive. Despite the existence of parental control tools, parents have complained that children can oftentimes sidestep or circumnavigate them.
Georgia joins states seeking parental permission before children join social media
ATLANTA — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.
Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.
The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.
A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.
Some in Congress also are proposing parental consent for minors.
State Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, argued the state should do more to limit social media use by children, saying it’s causing harm.
“Every rose has a thorn, and that’s social media in this generation,” Hilton said. “It’s great for connectivity and activism, but it has reared its ugly head on mental health.”
But opponents warned the bill would cause problems. For example, Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat, said that the ban on use of social media in schools could ban teachers from showing educationally valuable YouTube videos.
“If we do pass this, we’ll be back fixing this next year, because there are too many issues with this bill,” Wilkerson said.
The bill says social media services would have to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1, 2025.
Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social medial companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.
To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms, but children have been shown to easily evade the bans.
Up to 95% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.
The Georgia bill also aims to shut down porn sites by requiring submission of a digitized identification card or some other government-issued identification. Companies could be held liable if minors were found to access the sites, and could face fines of up to $10,000.
“It will protect our children,” said Rep. Rick Jasperse, a Jasper Republican who argues age verification will lead porn sites to cut off access to Georgians. In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law, leading Pornhub to cut off access to Texans.
The Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult film makers, says the bill would be ineffective because users could mask their location and because people would be forced to transmit sensitive information. They also argue it’s unconstitutional because there are less restrictive ways to keep children out and discriminate against certain types of speech. The coalition has sued multiple states over the laws.
The ban on school social media excludes email, news, gaming, online shopping, photograph editing and academic sites. The measure also requires a model program on the effects of social media and for students in grades 6-12, and requires existing anti-bullying programs to be updated.
The move comes after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in May that social media hasn’t been proven to be safe for young people.
Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” and asked tech companies to share data and increase transparency and for policymakers to regulate social media for safety the way they do car seats and baby formula.
Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instragram, announced in 2022 it was taking steps to verify ages. Meta says it provides “age-appropriate experiences” for teens 13-17 on Instagram, including preventing unwanted contact from unknown adults.
Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, also are suing Meta Platforms Inc., claiming the company harms young people and contributes to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.
Florida recently passed a law banning social media accounts for children under 14 regardless of parental consent and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.
Social Security Administration to remove food assistance as barrier to accessing certain benefits
The Social Security Administration has issued a final rule that will prevent food assistance from reducing payments to certain beneficiaries.
The change applies to Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, which provides monthly checks to adults and children who are disabled, blind or age 65 and older, and have little or no income or resources.
Approximately 7.4 million Americans receive support either exclusively from SSI or in combination with Social Security.
Under the new rule, which goes into effect Sept. 30, food will no longer count toward calculations for eligibility for benefits, known as In-Kind Support and Maintenance, or ISM.
Currently, support in the form of food, shelter or both may count as unearned income for SSI beneficiaries, and therefore reduce their payments or affect their eligibility for benefits.
The monthly maximum federal SSI amounts in 2024 are $943 for individuals, $1,415 for couples and $472 for essential persons, or those who live with an SSI beneficiary and provide care.
To qualify for SSI, beneficiaries must generally earn less than $1,971 per month from work. They must also have less than $2,000 in resources per individual, or $3,000 per couple.
That generally includes either money or other assets that can be turned into cash, such as bank accounts, bonds, property and stocks.
The new rule means SSI beneficiaries will no longer have to worry that the groceries or meals they receive from family or friends may reduce their monthly benefits, said Darcy Milburn, director of Social Security and health care policy at The Arc, a nonprofit organization serving people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
The Social Security Administration, in turn, will no longer have to use its limited resources to document every time a beneficiary received free food and then cut their monthly benefit by as much as a third, she said.
“It represents a really meaningful step to address one of the most complex, burdensome and inhumane policies impacting people with disabilities that receive SSI,” Milburn said.
The change is the first of several updates the Social Security Administration said it plans to put in place for SSI beneficiaries and applicants.
“Simplifying our policies is a common-sense solution that reduces the burden on the public and agency staff and helps promote equity by removing barriers to accessing payments,” Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said in a statement.
The new rule may help provide some relief to SSI beneficiaries as high inflation continues to prompt higher food and grocery bills for all Americans.
“People on SSI are one of the most food insecure groups in the United States,” said Thomas Foley, executive director at the National Disability Institute.
The new rule may also result in fewer overpayments or underpayments of benefits, and therefore increase financial security for beneficiaries, he said.
Congress may have the opportunity to enact bigger changes to SSI through a bipartisan bill that would raise the asset limits for beneficiaries to $10,000 for individuals, up from $2,000, and to $20,000 for married couples, up from $3,000.
“Disability affects everybody, so it’s a bipartisan issue,” Foley said.
“Restricting asset limits to the $2,000 level really impacts people’s ability to save and build a better financial future,” he said.
In December, bank CEOs including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified before the Senate that they are in favor of updating SSI’s rules.
“We have employees who don’t want us to increase their salary because if it goes over a certain amount, they can’t get that benefit which they’re entitled to,” Dimon said in December.
“This definitely should be fixed,” he said.
U.K. singer Duffy returns to social media 4 years after revealing kidnap and rape
Welsh singer Duffy broke her social media hiatus to share a motivational message to fans four years after revealing the horrific kidnap and rape that caused her to leave the spotlight.
The singer posted an inspirational video on Instagram on Monday.
“One day you’re going to see it, that happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart and following it wherever it chose to go,” a voiceover said in the video.
“Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself. It was always about embracing the person you are becoming. One day you will understand, that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself.”
Duffy, whose real name is Aimee Anne Duffy, captioned the video: “A little something to motivate the heart. Hope you are all doing well. Lots of love, Duffy.”
Fans flooded the comment section with love and support for the musician.
“We miss you Duffy and your beautiful voice,” one fan wrote.
“We miss you, Duffy. And we love you. Hope you are doing okay. Remember people love you here,” another commented.
Another told Duffy they think of her “EVERY day.”
“You’re so loved!” the fan wrote.
In 2020, Duffy told fans that she had been raped, drugged and held captive “over some days.”
“Of course, I survived. The recovery took time,” she said in a since-deleted Instagram post explaining her absence from the industry.
In February 2011 she announced that she was taking a break from music, following the release of her sophomore album “Endlessly.”
“But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine,” the singer said in the post.
In a written essay in 2020, Duffy wrote that she was drugged at a restaurant on her birthday and taken to a foreign country. She said she did not remember getting on an airplane and “came round in the back of a traveling vehicle.”
“I was put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me,” she wrote. “I remember the pain and trying to stay conscious in the room after it happened.”
Duffy described flying back home with her alleged abductor and said he “drugged me in my own home in the four weeks.”
She eventually escaped but said she did not go to the police initially because she did not feel safe.
The 39-year-old singer rose to international fame in 2008 following the release of her song “Mercy,” which was featured in the “Sex and the City” movie and the television show “Grey’s Anatomy.” The following year, she won the Grammy for best pop vocal album.
Trump’s Truth Social soars in first day of trading on Nasdaq
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill that bans children under 14 from having social media accounts
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Monday that will prohibit children younger than 14 from joining social media in the state. Those who are 14 or 15 will need a parent’s consent before they join a platform.
The bill, HB3, also directs social media companies to delete the existing accounts of those who are under 14. Companies that fail to do so could be sued on behalf of the child who creates an account on the platform. The minor could be awarded up to $10,000 in damages, according to the bill. Companies found to be in violation of the law would also be liable for up to $50,000 per violation, as well as attorney’s fees and court costs.
“Ultimately, [we’re] trying to help parents navigate this very difficult terrain that we have now with raising kids, and so I appreciate the work that’s been put in,” DeSantis said in remarks during the bill-signing ceremony.
DeSantis previously vetoed a more restrictive version of the bill that would have banned social media accounts for kids under 16. That bill also required Florida residents to submit an ID or other identifying materials in order to join social media.
HB3, which is slated to take effect in January 2025, comes as efforts to regulate social media continue to ramp up across the U.S. amid concerns from some parents that the platforms don’t do enough to keep their kids safe online.
In December, more than 200 organizations sent a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to schedule a vote on the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which seeks to create liability, or a “duty of care,” for apps and online platforms that recommend content to minors that can negatively affect their mental health.
In January, lawmakers grilled CEOs from TikTok, X and Meta about online child safety. The tech executives reaffirmed their commitment to child safety, and pointed to various tools they offer as examples of how they are proactive about preventing exploitation online.
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner and other advocates of the new law argue that social media use can harm children’s mental health and can lead to sexual predators communicating with minors.
“None of us can afford to be on the sidelines when it comes to social media,” Renner said in remarks made at the bill signing.
Several states that have enacted similar laws to limit teen social media — including Ohio and Arkansas — have been challenged by NetChoice LLC, a coalition of social media platforms whose members include Meta, Google and X, among others.
Florida’s law is also expected to face legal challenges over claims that it violates the First Amendment.
“We’re disappointed to see Gov. DeSantis sign onto this route,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel for NetChoice, said in an email statement, calling the law “unconstitutional.” “There are better ways to keep Floridians, their families and their data safe and secure online without violating their freedoms.”
Both DeSantis and Renner alluded in their remarks to the potential legal hurdles ahead.
“You will not find a line in this bill that addresses good speech or bad speech because that would violate the First Amendment,” Renner said. “We’ve not addressed that at all. What we have addressed is the addictive features that are at the heart of why children stay on these platforms for hours and hours on end.”
He specifically called out NetChoice, saying, “We’re going to beat them, and we’re never ever going to stop.”
DeSantis argued the bill is constitutionally sound.
“Any time I see a bill, if I don’t think it’s constitutional, I veto it,” he said. He described the bill as “a fair application of the law and Constitution.”
Supreme Court grapples with online First Amendment rights as social media teems with misinformation
As big tech firms wrestle with how to keep false and harmful information off their social networks, the Supreme Court is wrestling with whether platforms like Facebook and Twitter, now called X, have the right to decide what users can say on their sites.
The dispute centers on a pair of laws passed in the red states of Florida and Texas over the question of First Amendment rights on the internet. The Supreme Court is considering whether the platforms are like newspapers, which have free speech rights to make their own editorial decisions, or if they’re more like telephone companies, that merely transmit everyone’s speech.
If the laws are upheld, the platforms could be forced to carry hate speech, and false medical information, the very content most big tech companies have spent years trying to remove through teams of content moderators. But in the process, conservatives claim that the companies have engaged in a conspiracy to suppress their speech.
As in this case: a tweet in 2022 from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claiming that there were…
“Extremely high amounts of COVID vaccine deaths.”
Twitter eventually banned Greene’s personal account for “multiple violations” of its COVID policy.
Facebook and YouTube also removed or labeled posts they deemed “misinformation.”
Confronted with criticisms from conservatives like Congressman Jim Jordan, that the social media companies were censoring their views, and because of cost-costing, platforms began downsizing their fact checking teams.
60 Minutes
So today, social media is teeming with misinformation. Like these posts suggesting tanks are moving across the Texas-Mexico border. But it’s actually footage from Chile.
These are AI-generated images of – well, see for yourself.
With social media moderation teams shrinking, a new target is misinformation academic researchers who began working closely with the platforms after evidence of Russian interference online in the 2016 election.
Lesley Stahl: Are researchers being chilled?
Kate Starbird: Absolutely.
Kate Starbird is a professor at the University of Washington, a former professional basketball player, and a leader of a misinformation research group created ahead of the 2020 election.
Kate Starbird: We were very specifically looking at misinformation about election processes, procedures, and election results. And if we saw something about that, we would pass it along to the platforms if we thought it violated their– one of their policies.
Here’s an example: a November 2020 tweet saying that election software in Michigan “switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden.”
The researchers alerted Twitter that then decided to label it with a warning.
Lesley Stahl: I understand that some of the researchers, including you, have– had some threats against them death threats.
Kate Starbird: I have received one. Sometimes they’re threats with something behind them. And sometimes they are just there to make you nervous and uncomfortable. And it’s hard to know the difference.
Lesley Stahl: This campaign against you is meant to discredit you. So we won’t believe you.
Kate Starbird: Absolutely. It’s interesting that the people that pushed voter fraud lies are some of the same people that are trying to discredit researchers that are trying to understand the problem.
Lesley Stahl: Did your research find that there was more misinformation spread by conservatives?
Kate Starbird: Absolutely. I think– not just our research, research across the board, looking at the 2020 election found that there was more misinformation spread by people that were supporters of Donald Trump or conservatives. And the events of January 6th kind of underscore this.
Kate Starbird: The folks climbing up the Capitol Building were supporters– of Donald Trump. And they were– they were misinformed by these false claims. And– and that motivated those actions.
60 Minutes
Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Lesley Stahl: So how big a problem is mis and disinformation on the web?
Rep. Jim Jordan: Well, I’m sure there’s some. But I think, you know– our concern is the bigger problem of the attack on First Amendment liberties.
Congressman Jordan’s Judiciary Committee produced a report that concluded there’s a “censorship industrial complex” where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives, which Kate Starbird vigorously denies.
But Congressman Jordan says her group unfairly flagged posts like this tweet by Newt Gingrich:
“Pennsylvania democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election”
He complains that government officials put pressure on social media companies directly –
Rep. Jim Jordan: A great example, 36 hours into the Biden administration, the– the Biden White House sends– a email to Twitter and says, “We think you should take down this tweet ASAP.”
Just a call alone from the government, he says, can be unnerving.
Rep. Jim Jordan: You can’t have the government say, “Hey, we want you to do X,” government who has the ability to regulate these private companies, government which has the ability to tax these private companies.
He says that White House email to Twitter involved a tweet from…
Rep. Jim Jordan: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and everything in the tweet was true.
That tweet implied falsely that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death was caused by the COVID vaccine.
Lesley Stahl: Did they take it down?
Rep. Jim Jordan: Turned out they didn’t. Thank goodness.
And that post is still up.
Kate Starbird says the social media platforms also often ignored the researchers’ suggestions.
Kate Starbird: The statistics I’ve seen are just for the Twitter platform. But I– my understanding is– is that they’ve responded to about 30% of the things that we sent them. And I think the– on the majority of those, they put labels.
Lesley Stahl: But just a third.
Kate Starbird: Just a third, yeah.
Lesley Stahl: And do you suspect that Facebook was the same?
Kate Starbird: Oh, yeah.
Katie Harbath: These platforms have their own First Amendment rights.
Katie Harbath spent a decade at Facebook where she helped develop its policies around election misinformation. When she was there, she says it was not unusual for the government to ask Facebook to remove content, which is proper, as long as the government is not coercing.
60 Minutes
Katie Harbath: Conservatives are alleging that the platforms were taking down content at the behest of the government which is not true. The platforms made their own decisions. And many times we were pushing back on the government.
Lesley Stahl: Can we talk about a specific case? It’s of Nancy Pelosi. It’s a doctored tape where she’s– she looks drunk.
This was the video of then-House Speaker Pelosi posted to Facebook in 2019, slowed down to make it seem that she was slurring her words.
Lesley Stahl: Did it come down?
Katie Harbath: It did not.
Lesley Stahl: Why?
Katie Harbath: Because it didn’t violate the policies that they had.
Lesley Stahl: So did she put pressure on the company to take it down?
Katie Harbath: She was definitely not pleased.
Lesley Stahl: Is that a yes?
Katie Harbath: Yes. And it really damaged the relationship that the company had with her.
The conservatives’ campaign faced a setback at the Supreme Court on Monday when a majority of the justices seemed poised to reject their effort to limit attempts by the government to influence social media.
The court is deciding, in separate cases, whether the platforms are like news organizations with a First Amendment right to control who and what information appears on their sites.
Congressman Jordan argues that the tech companies shouldn’t remove most of what they call “misinformation.”
Rep. Jim Jordan: I think you let the American people, respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what’s accurate, what isn’t.
Lesley Stahl: Well, what about this idea that they– the 2020 election was stolen? You think that these companies should allow people to say that and individuals can make up their own mind and that there should be–
Rep. Jim Jordan: I think the American people are smart. Look– I’ve not said that. What I’ve said is there were concerns about the 2020 election. I think Americans agree with that.
Lesley Stahl: No they don’t–
Rep. Jim Jordan: You don’t think they think there were concerns with the 2020 election?
Lesley Stahl: Most people don’t question the result. That’s all I’m saying. They don’t question whether–
Rep. Jim Jordan: Fair enough.
Lesley Stahl: Biden won or not. Right? Right? Most people don’t question
Rep. Jim Jordan: Oh, OK. No–
Lesley Stahl: The outcome.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Right.
X basically did what Jordan proposes. After Elon Musk took over in 2022, most of its fact checkers were fired. Now the site is rife with trash talk and lies. Little would you know that this – said to be footage from Gaza — is really from a video game. Eventually X users added a warning label.
In this post, pictures of real babies killed in Israeli strikes are falsely dismissed as dolls.
Darrell West: The toothpaste is out of the tube and we have to figure out how to deal with the resulting mess.
60 Minutes
Darrell West, a senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, says the clash over “what is true” is fraying our institutions and threatening democracies around the world.
Darrell West: Half of the world is voting this year and the world could stick with democracy or move toward authoritarianism. The danger is disinformation could decide the elections in a number of different countries.
In the U.S., he says, the right wing has been flooding the internet with reams of misleading information in order to confuse the public. And he’s alarmed by the campaign to silence the academic researchers, who have had to spend money and time on demands from Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee.
Lesley Stahl: There are people who make the accusation that going after these researchers, misinformation researchers, is tantamount to harassment. And that your goal really is to chill the research.
Rep. Jim Jordan: I find it interesting that you use the word “chill,” because in– in effect, what they’re doing is chilling First Amendment free speech rights. When, when they’re working in an effort to censor Americans, that’s a chilling impact on speech.
Lesley Stahl: They say what you’re doing, they do, is a violation of their First Amendment right.
Rep. Jim Jordan: So us pointing out, us doing our constitutional duty of oversight of the executive branch– and somehow w– (LAUGH) we’re censoring? That makes no sense.
Lesley Stahl: We Americans, we’re looking at the same thing and seeing a different truth.
Rep. Jim Jordan: We might see different things, I don’t– I don’t think you can see a different truth, because truth is truth.
Lesley Stahl: Okay. The– the researchers say they’re being chilled. That’s their truth.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: You’re saying they’re not. So what’s the truth?
Rep. Jim Jordan: They can do their research. God bless em’, do all the research you want. Don’t say we think this particular tweet is not true– and– or– or–“
Lesley Stahl: Well, that’s their First Amendment right to say that.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Well, they can say it, but they can’t take it down.
Lesley Stahl: Well, they can’t take it down and they don’t. They just send their information to the companies.
Rep. Jim Jordan: But when they’re coordinating with government, that’s a different animal.
Lesley Stahl: Okay, well, of course, they deny they’re coordinating.
We just went round and round.
Starbird says she and her team feel intimidated by the conservatives’ campaign, so while they will continue releasing their research reports on misinformation, they will no longer send their findings to the social media platforms.
Produced by Ayesha Siddiqi. Associate producer, Kate Morris. Broadcast associates, Wren Woodson and Aria Een. Edited by Matthew Lev.
Lesley Stahl
Balance between fighting misinformation and protecting speech on social media gets more complicated
As the U.S. 2024 presidential election gets underway, social media companies are caught in an unenviable position: trying to stop the spread of misinformation while also facing more and more allegations of censorship.
Claims of censorship online have, in some cases, stymied efforts to combat false election news shared online. The problem is not unique to the U.S.: high-stake elections are being held in dozens of countries around the world this year and some worry that misinformation could influence the results.
“Half of the world is voting this year and the world could stick with democracy or move toward authoritarianism,” Darrell West, a senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, said. “The danger is, disinformation could decide the elections in a number of different countries.”
How combating misinformation online has changed in recent years
Academic researchers began working closely with social media platforms after evidence surfaced of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Big tech companies have wrestled with keeping false and harmful information off their platforms for years. They’ve suspended and banned accounts. The companies have removed or labeled posts deemed “misinformation,” sometimes adding warnings.
60 Minutes
Fighting misinformation became a key tenet of the internet as the COVID-19 pandemic began. Robert Kennedy Jr. was temporarily banned from Instagram after posting false coronavirus vaccine claims. Over on Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended after she claimed COVID vaccines and masks didn’t work.
Misinformation continued to spread online during the 2020 election.
“We were very specifically looking at misinformation about election processes, procedures and election results,” said Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of the Election Integrity Partnership, a group she helped launch in 2020. “If we saw something about that, we would pass it along to the platforms if we thought it violated one of their policies.”
Researchers flagged a November 2020 tweet saying that election software in Michigan switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Twitter labeled the post with a warning.
Starbird said her research has found that more misinformation is spread by conservatives.
“Not just our research, research across the board looking at the 2020 election found that there was more misinformation spread by people that were supporters of Donald Trump or conservatives,” Starbird said. “And the events of January 6th kind of underscore this.”
60 Minutes
But some researchers like Starbird, who says she received a death threat for her work on misinformation, have stopped communicating with social media platforms.
Confronted with criticism from conservatives, who claim their views were being censored, and because of cost-cutting, social media platforms began downsizing their fact-checking teams.
Why some in Congress say combating misinformation is stifling freedom of speech
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, argues that tech companies shouldn’t remove most of what they call misinformation.
“I think you let the American people, respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what’s accurate, what isn’t,” Jordan said in an interview.
While Jordan acknowledges there is misinformation online, he sees a bigger problem in what he views as an attack on First Amendment liberties. His committee last year produced a report that concluded there was a “censorship industrial complex” where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives — an allegation that Starbird vigorously denies.
Jordan said her group has unfairly flagged posts, such as one by Newt Gingrich, who in 2020 tweeted: “Pennsylvania democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election.”
Jordan also complains that government officials put pressure on social media companies directly.
60 Minutes
“You can’t have the government say, ‘Hey, we want you to do X,'” Jordan said. “Government who has the ability to regulate these private companies, government which has the ability to tax these private companies.”
Katie Harbath, who spent a decade at Facebook working on the company’s policies around election misinformation, said the platforms have their own First Amendment rights.
She said that while she was at Facebook, it was not unusual for the government to ask the company to remove content, something she said was appropriate as long as the government is not coercing.
“Conservatives are alleging that the platforms were taking down content at the behest of the government, which is not true,” Harbath said. “The platforms made their own decisions.”
Many times, the companies pushed back. In 2019, a doctored video of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was posted online, slowed down to make it seem as if she was slurring. The video stayed up because it didn’t violate Facebook’s policies, Harbath said.
“She was definitely not pleased,” Harbath said of Pelosi.
Court battles over misinformation, free speech online-
The conservatives’ campaign faced a setback at the Supreme Court on Monday when a majority of the justices seemed poised to reject their effort to limit attempts by the government to influence social media.
In other cases, the court will look at laws passed in Texas and Florida to determine whether tech companies are like news organizations —with a First Amendment right to control who and what information appears on their sites— or like telephone companies, entities merely transmitting speech.
If those state laws are upheld, the platforms could be forced to carry hate speech and false medical information, some warn. West, the senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, said the clash over what’s true is fraying our institutions and threatening democracies around the world.
“The toothpaste is out of the tube and we have to figure out how to deal with the resulting mess,” West said.
Lesley Stahl
Are social media influencers getting too influential?
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.