As the 2024 election approaches, Big Tech companies like Google and Meta are poised to once again play a pivotal role in the spread of misinformation meant to disenfranchise Black voters and justify violence in the name of right-wing candidates. During the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles, social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others consistently ignored the warning signs that they were helping to undermine our democracy.

This dangerous trend doesn’t seem to be changing. Despite their claims that they’ve learned their lesson and are shoring up protections against misinformation ahead of the 2024 election cycle, large tech companies are cutting key staff that moderate content and removing election protections from their policies that are supposed to safeguard platform users from misinformation. Color Of Change members and others in the racial justice community fought for and won these election protection policies and increased staffing. Without these safeguards, the stage is set once again for the unbridled spread of misinformation, the targeted intimidation of Black voters, and the willful tipping of the algorithmic scales towards right-wing content that could influence the election’s outcome. 

Color Of Change is demanding that Big Tech companies do the following: 

• Ban generative AI from political ads;
• Require disclosure of generative AI use for all other political content; 
• Ban political deep fakes; and
• Restore prohibitions about misinformation and lies about the validity of the 2020 election.

Color Of Change is calling on Big Tech to do the right thing by enacting robust election protection policies on social media platforms. Sign our petition to take a stand for democracy today!

Here is the Petition:

Big Tech executives,

Threats on public officials, educators and health care workers are on the rise across the United States. This rise is due in no small part to the rampant misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms run by your companies. Researchers have found that violent rhetoric is increasing and becoming normalized online, leading to an increase in politically motivated threats. Repeat candidates and newcomers alike are spouting misinformation and disinformation however they can, leading to an increase in political violence. Meanwhile, your platforms have eliminated policies and infrastructure to prevent misinformation from spreading. Your platforms have degraded their policies and infrastructure, even as the threat of political violence skyrockets. Without more substantive protections on social media platforms, candidates and others with large followings will continue to use these platforms as vectors to drive violence against our communities and to artificially amplify fringe beliefs. This will prevent Black voters from fully exercising their rights through targeted misinformation around polling locations/times/voter eligibility as well as implied and overt threats of violence at polling locations.  

The combination of new technologies, like AI and deep fakes, and the accelerated decline of election protection at other social media corporations, has the 2024 election primed to be one of the most digitally chaotic elections yet. 

That is why we are sending you the following demands:

* Ban generative AI from political ads;
* Require disclosure of generative AI use for all other political content;
* Ban political deep fakes; and
* Restore prohibitions about misinformation and lies about the validity of the 2020 election.