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    June 26, 2024 ABA Task Force for American Democracy

    Safeguarding Democracy Against Disinformation | German Marshall Fund of the United States

    German Marshall Fund, March 24, 2020
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    Summary

    This report provides a detailed review of the current information ecosystem online and its vulnerabilities to extremist information and foreign state actors. The report includes a number of concrete examples of extremist and opaque information spreading online and makes recommendations for safeguarding digital democracy. Notably, the article rejects the binary distinction between allowing information as it currently is, or government regulation of free speech, but includes in-between areas of platforms self-regulating, as they already do in choice of ads for users, as well as in a number of civic health recommendations such as independent news.

    Key Findings/Message

    Safeguarding digital democracy is essential to the health of our society and government. This should be done through three main areas 1) dampening the noise of misinformation, 2) boosting the signal of local and independent news and 3) creating independent accountability through codes of conduct for data sharing monitoring. 

    Key Recommendations Made

    • Creation of a Digital Democracy Agency, a public institution/agency to protect the integrity of the digital information system by enforcing good practices on platforms.
    • Better labeling of information online from new sources and greater transparency to users of how algorithms are recommending content, and reduction of algorithm-enabled virality that can enable the spread of misinformation.
    • Campaign finance should be reformed to make it more transparent who is funding ads on online platforms.
    • Platforms should be required to share information with each other and with national security agencies to better combat extremism occurring on platforms.
    • Platforms should develop a code of conduct that governs how they handle data sharing and condition Section 230 immunity on compliance with that code.