By Dustin Volz and Emily Glazer
Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Twitter Inc. have
discussed with federal officials how the social-media platforms can
prevent the spread of misinformation in the days before and after
the election, after the U.S. intelligence community warned of
foreign interference and President Trump called the vote's
integrity into question.
The conversations are designed to address problems that may
arise from across the political spectrum and have included the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland
Security and intelligence agencies, according to people familiar
with the matter.
They have been shaped by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic,
which is expected to result in far more people voting by mail than
in previous elections, making it unclear how long it will take to
have final election results.
The discussions have grown more urgent, the people said, as
President Trump has repeated his warning of likely vote-by-mail
fraud. In late July, for example, he tweeted to his nearly 85
million followers: "2020 will be the most INACCURATE &
FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to
the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and
safely vote???"
The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Russia has
undertaken a broad effort to damage Democrat Joe Biden's bid for
the presidency, while China prefers that President Trump not win
re-election, a senior intelligence official said recently.
The concern among officials and social-media companies is that
any delay in declaring a result or widespread problems with mail-in
voting could trigger the spreading of false stories about how the
votes are being counted.
The broader rollout of mail-in voting will test states'
abilities to count votes quickly and accurately. Studies show
absentee-voter fraud has been rare in prior elections. But
politicians in both parties have sometimes been emboldened by
delays in certifying results in past elections to speculate about
foul play.
Among the possibilities being discussed at Facebook and other
tech platforms are putting in place procedures to act more quickly
on misinformation, because false posts can sometimes exist online
for hours before platforms take them down, said people familiar
with the discussions.
Facebook, for instance, is looking at updating policies related
to the time between voting and when results are announced, one of
the people said. It is also examining potential product updates
through its Voting Information Center and additional labels added
to posts from politicians, the person said.
Matthew Morgan, general counsel for the Trump campaign, said
that Democrats were "trafficking in conspiracy theories and
hypotheticals" and that Mr. Trump's concerns stemmed from states
with little experience in mail balloting rushing to adopt the
method.
"Democrats are trying to undermine the integrity of our election
mere months before Election Day by hastily implementing
chaos-ridden universal vote-by-mail schemes in states that have no
experience or infrastructure to support these systems," Mr. Morgan
said.
The National Security Council said in a statement that the Trump
administration doesn't tolerate foreign election interference and
that it was working with states, social-media firms and election
vendors "to protect the integrity of the 2020 elections."
Representatives for Facebook, Twitter and Google said they are
working closely with election officials and industry peers to
safeguard the process, including by strengthening policies and
procedures that were put in place after the 2016 election.
Democratic Party officials have pressed Facebook on similar
subjects, including in a late July meeting when representatives of
campaign committees asked the company for assurances that it would
intervene if Mr. Trump or others promoted misinformation about the
outcome during the counting of votes, according to people familiar
with the conversation.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has convened a series
of high-level meetings over the past several months to discuss the
company's potential response to election-related misinformation, a
person familiar with the matter said.
At an internal Facebook employee Q&A on Aug. 6, Mr.
Zuckerberg said the company is "sort of in an unprecedented
position" given that election results could be unknown for days or
weeks, according to the person. BuzzFeed News earlier reported on
the meeting.
Chief among the issues, said several current and former
officials from different agencies, were Mr. Trump's repeated
attacks on the security of voting by mail and his suggestions that
election results could be tampered with because of the potential
effect such messages could have on public confidence in the
outcome. Some current officials working on election security said
they consider such messaging from the president to be a more
significant threat than efforts by foreign countries to undermine
the election's integrity.
A Wall Street Journal review of Mr. Trump's tweets dating back
to 2012 found more than 110 instances of the president claiming
widespread illegal voting, asserting an election or primary was
rigged, or that voting by mail would allow for rampant fraud. More
than half of those tweets were from this year, with the most of
them concerning mail balloting.
Experts in both election security and foreign disinformation
said Moscow's efforts to sow division and undermine faith in U.S.
democracy have continued and evolved since 2016, moving away from
automated, spamlike content and toward more-refined efforts to seed
disinformation content on websites presented as authentic.
Clint Watts, a former FBI official and a research fellow with
the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that Mr. Trump's direct
attacks on the election's integrity represented a different
problem.
"Rewind four years: The Russian could never have pushed this
volume or intensity of disinformation into our election space that
comes directly from the president," Mr. Watts said.
Trump administration officials at times have faced the dilemma
of trying to shore up public confidence in the election process,
including vote-by-mail balloting, without provoking a reaction from
Mr. Trump that undermines the effort, according to current and
former officials.
Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official at the Department of
Homeland Security, urged last week in a speech at the Black Hat
cybersecurity conference that the public be calm in expecting
delayed reporting of results.
"The last measure of resilience in the 2020 election is going to
be an informed, patient voter," Mr. Krebs said at the conference.
"It's going to take time to count the vote, whether it's absentee
ballots coming in, whether it's longer lines. Whatever it takes,
it's going to take a little bit more time."
--Jeff Horwitz contributed to this article.
Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at
emily.glazer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 12, 2020 18:57 ET (22:57 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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