“Twitter, Facebook face rocky future post-Donald Trump”

Roll Call:

Both Facebook and Twitter went into Election Day under enormous pressure from both parties, but in the end it was Trump and other Republicans whose posts were labeled most often for containing misleading or false information about the vote count and the integrity of the election.

Disinformation experts are skeptical that Twitter and Facebook’s labeling did much to quell the spread of Trump’s claims and conspiracy theories that spread using hashtags like #SharpieGate and #StopTheSteal throughout the week.

“We don’t really know what the impacts of the labels are,” Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the flow of information online, told reporters last week during a briefing organized by the Election Integrity Partnership.

“At this point, no matter how fast they take action and no matter what labels they put on those messages, they’re getting out and they’re landing in a soft audience that is going to soak it up because it’s telling them what they want to hear,” Starbird added.

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