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Biden campaign is spoiling for a fight over election disinformation [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-09-20

Social media companies were never particularly good at policing their platforms for inaccuracies and deliberate lies, but ahead of another nation-defining presidential cycle, they are downright promising to be bad at it.

X, née Twitter, jump-started its 2024 disinformation campaign last November when it reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump, who with some 87 million followers was a notorious purveyor of lies and conspiracy theories before getting ejected from the platform. In fact, when Elon Musk assumed control of Twitter last October, extremist disinformation pulsed through the platform in celebration of his takeover. Facebook and YouTube are now racing to keep up with X's laissez-faire moderation scheme, which has made the platform a favorite with neo-Nazis.

In recognition of the perils ahead, the Biden campaign is preparing an aggressive strategy to combat what will surely be a torrent of lies flooding the political landscape.

According to Politico, the effort will include "hundreds of staffers and volunteers to monitor platforms, buying advertising to fight bogus claims, pushing its own countermessages out through grassroots allies."

Helming the effort will be Rob Flaherty, the former White House director of digital strategy, who's already drawn scrutiny from Republicans over his aggressive push to stanch the flow of misinformation related to COVID-19 and the 2020 election on social media platforms. Not only are House Republicans probing the White House’s urging of social media platforms to delete posts, they have also filed a lawsuit targeting the White House's approach.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court found the Biden White House had likely violated the First Amendment, but the order has been paused as the administration formulates a formal bid for the Supreme Court to block the order.

Still, Flaherty, now a Biden deputy campaign manager, is spoiling for the fight all over again—this time in the electoral arena.

“The campaign is going to have to be more aggressive pushing back on misinformation from a communications perspective and filling some of the gaps these companies are leaving behind,” Flaherty told Politico.

Indeed. The point of disinformation is to create so much uncertainty and chaos that people give up and disengage. In 2024, Trump supporters—who are animated by chaos—will likely be both highly motivated and swimming in disinformation. So the potential disengagement of reality-based voters could prove to be calamitous for our constitutional republic.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/20/2194444/-Biden-campaign-preps-for-a-2024-torrent-of-disinformation-Voters-should-too

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