It’s going to take a lot of concerted fact-checking efforts to make any difference—and even that might not be enough. Via FiveThirtyEight:
In other words, even if some Twitter users now know that voting by mail doesn’t cause voter fraud, it’s unlikely that their attitudes about Trump will change, let alone their attitudes about voting by mail . After all, in our two-party system, it is still a tremendous leap for a Trump supporter to defect to voting for a Democrat.
But the more aggressively Twitter combats misinformation coming from Trump, the more it risks both the ire of the Trump administration and a potential loss of angered Republican users. A more comprehensive corrections department that fact checks all public figures might allay some criticisms from the right that. But it would also cost money to employ more fact-checkers, and it might still disproportionately correct conservative voices if they do share more misleading information than liberals.
Social media companies will have to balance competing demands in deciding exactly how — and how much — they want to correct misinformation. The good news is that fact-checking does work. But the bad news is that it’s going to take a lot of concerted fact-checking efforts to make any difference — and even that might not be enough.
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He’s the author of the book, “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.”
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