Giving Compass' Take:

• Bronwyn Howell recounts the UK's electoral efforts to monitor fake news and how the U.S. can expand upon them in 2020.

• With so much growth in recent years, social media has become a major influence on American politics. How can we harness the immensity of social media for its strengths and eliminate weaknesses? What does it take to make this happen?

• Learn about the influence of fake news in non-political factions.

Social media platforms will undoubtedly play an even more prominent role than it did the last time these elections were held: one need look no further than the United Kingdom’s 2019 plebiscite or Australia’s 2019 federal election for proof.

Prior to the UK election, its Electoral Commission conducted an inquiry and provided recommendations for governments, social media companies, and campaigners. These included (for governments) changing the law to require electoral ads contain an imprint saying who is behind it and who created it (as occurs currently for print and television ads), and amending rules for campaign spending to require campaigners to account separately for spending on social media advertising.

While the UK rules appear sound with regard to managing electoral spending at an aggregate level, they fall short of solving the fragmented distribution of content across different subsets of voters. While an ad may carry a name as the authorizing party, it’s not easy for a consumer to identify whether the name information is legitimate.

Authorities could mandate that ads be registered by candidates or their agents and issued a hashed code which, when embedded in the message, could be used by the viewer to access the original ad and verify its legitimacy or authenticity. The electoral authority could also facilitate the aggregation of ads registered by specific authorizing entities (e.g. political parties or individual candidates), enabling an interested party to see all messages from that authority, not just those targeted to them specifically on social media. Such an activity certainly increases transaction costs, but the greater assurance that messages are authentic and authorized, and the ability for electors to access a complete set of electoral messages (and not just a subset selected by their social media providers) mean that the benefits surely outweigh the costs.

Read the full article about fake news and electoral action on social media by Bronwyn Howell at AEI.