Gasp! Politico has uncovered a corner of the Web that as of yet remains uncensored and thus allows unapproved messages to reach people. This is simply intolerable, at least from the Politico POV as presented by their tech policy reporter Rebecca Kern on Friday in “WhatsApp Channels, used by millions, has no clear election rules.”
Yes, we humble prols need rules, rules, RULES to guide us on how to think and to steer us away from dangerous ThoughtCrimes in this election year.
A new platform launched by tech giant Meta and used by half a billion people has been running for more than eight months worldwide without any explicit election-disinformation policies — a lapse that lawmakers, disinformation experts and former Meta employees warn could pose grave risks in a year when nearly half the globe is casting major votes.
Got that? Getting information unfiltered by our media overlords could pose “grave risks.” Kern goes on to describe the horrors of getting information without the proper “guardrails” to keep our minds right:
The platform, called WhatsApp Channels, transforms WhatsApp from a private messaging and group chat service into a broadcast platform as well, with users able to follow posts from public accounts. Although Meta has clear guardrails against voter interference, threats of violence and election misinformation on its other platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, it has not imposed the same rules on WhatsApp Channels, instead relying on broader community guidelines.
With absolutely no sense of irony, Kern quotes the grand master of Trump-Russia Collusion disinformation about the dangers of election misinformation.
Meta’s lack of clear election disinformation policies on the new public platform stands in contrast to the broadcast messaging services it launched on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram last year which have such rules in place. Critics say Meta isn’t evenly applying its election integrity commitments as nearly 2 billion people vote in more than 60 countries this year.
“Meta’s continued failure to implement explicit election misinformation policies on its public WhatsApp Channels threatens the integrity of democratic processes in the United States and across the globe,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, adding, “It is absolutely imperative that Meta extends the same policies from its other platforms to WhatsApp Channels to prevent the spread of election-related falsehoods.”
Yeah, because when you want to crack down on misinformation you should quote one of the biggest and most shameless purveyors of misinformation… Adam Schiff.
Oh, and a big thank you to this Mockingbird Media outlet for warning us about how a small slice of unvetted election news could slip through to us via Whatsapp.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said Channels’ community guidelines — which prohibit illegal content, violent content, fraud or deceitful content — would apply to posts on voter suppression. However, the guidelines don’t specifically mention voting or elections.
Of course, the biggest irony of all is that the purveyor of the biggest misinformation of the 2020 election was none other than Politico itself when its then national security reporter, Natasha Bertrand, recited MISINFORMATION spoon-fed to her by intel agencies to misreport in October of that year that “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
So it’s hard to take seriously Politico‘s deep concern that somewhere out there a bit of election “misinformation” might sneak through this year when they have not even acknowledged who was responsible for spreading 2020 election misinformation. Namely themselves. Oh, but please do keep sanctimoniously lecturing us about election misinformation this year while Memory Holing your own Politico role in over the top election misinformation in the last presidential election.