“The stakes of this election are too high — we need to fight the spread of false information that dis-empowers voters and undermines democracy,” she said.

“Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take on the full array of disinformation that foreign actors and people in and around the Trump campaign will use to divide Democrats, suppress Democratic votes, and erode the standing of the Democratic nominee,” she said in announcing her latest presidential campaign plan.

Warning of the dangers of false information online, Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday promised to fight its spread as a candidate and if elected president while pushing to hold Facebook and other tech companies responsible for its proliferation.


Warren said her efforts to combat disinformation start on the campaign trail. She promised to not spread fake news reports, doctored images, or other false or manipulated information on social media and said her campaign won’t promote content from fake accounts. She also said she won’t allow campaign staff or surrogates to spread disinformation on social media.

“I will not tolerate the use of false information or false accounts to attack my opponents, promote my campaign, or undermine our elections. And I urge my fellow candidates to do the same,” she said.

Warren said she alone can’t stop people from attempting to influence American elections by spreading false information on social media, so she called on tech companies to take a more active role in fighting it.

She explicitly called out prominent technology company chief executives Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Susan Wojcicki of YouTube for their inaction. Warren said the drive to prioritize profit by those companies often gets in the way of preventing disinformation. She asked the tech companies to work with one another and the federal government to share information about “cross-platform disinformation campaigns.”


Tech companies should also clearly label content created by state-controlled organizations, like information campaigns that are funded by foreign governments, she said. Facebook and YouTube have both announced policies to label state-controlled media, but Warren said the policies haven’t been realized or have been inconsistently implemented.

Social media companies also should tell users when they’ve interacted with fake accounts and even stop content from those accounts from being shared further, she said.

Because Warren said one of the “most harmful” forms of disinformation contributes to voter suppression, tech companies need to ban accounts that knowingly spread false information about how, when, and where to vote.

Social media platforms also need to be more transparent about how their algorithms work so users can understand why they see the content that they do, and Warren said users should have a say in how their data and preferences are used in those algorithms.

Additionally, Warren called for the platforms to open up their data so academics and watchdog organizations can understand the full extent of disinformation on social media.

“Research by academics and watchdog organizations has provided the public with important insights into how disinformation spreads online, but these efforts are greatly limited by social media platforms’ unwillingness to share data," she said. "Platforms like Facebook currently provide only limited and inconsistent access.”

Warren also called on the federal government to take steps to stop disinformation like creating civil and criminal penalties for knowingly spreading fake information, especially information aimed at stopping people from voting.


"Disinformation erodes our democracy, and Democrats must have a plan to address it,” she said.

If elected, Warren said she would push for criminal and civil penalties for knowingly disseminating false information about when and how to vote, and reinstate the cybersecurity coordinator at the National Security Council, a position that the Trump Administration eliminated in 2018. She also said she would want to convene a summit of countries to coordinate policy on disinformation.







