Consider, though, that deceptive messaging seems to be held to an entirely different standard in other contexts. The recent Virginia gubernatorial race offers two instructive examples.
In the first, the Virginia Democratic Party mailed Virginians literature touting Donald Trump’s endorsement of Glenn Youngkin. The ostensibly Republican-produced mailer featured a photoshopped picture of Youngkin and Trump, only mentioning in barely noticeable fine print that the endorsement announcement had been sent by the Virginia Democrats.
In the second, just days before the election, the Lincoln Project arranged for a group of actors dressed as white nationalists to chant and pose for photos in front of a Glenn Youngkin campaign bus. (This example was particularly interesting, considering that while it occurred in public, both its spread and unmasking happened online.) Initially, some Democratic operatives reshared photos of the stunt as though it were real. Traditional media initially didn’t know what to make of the episode, and its coverage didn’t move as quickly as discussion of the photo-op on Twitter. While the stunt occurred off-line, few people saw it there — it was primarily a digital spectacle.
Yet neither of these efforts to spread discouraging disinformation were deemed voter suppression. Why?
In part, this double standard may derive from our experience with foreign disinformation in the 2016 election. After Russia’s divisive disinformation campaign, it’s been more difficult to separate domestic digital dirty tricks from something more sinister. Off-line trickery has been around longer and is less likely to be the work of foreign agents.
Some of the problem may simply be partisanship. Democrats have led the charge against voter suppression in social-media ads, but gain little by calling attention to friendly disinformation elsewhere. Republicans have charged Democrats with hypocrisy for campaigning with disinformation while condemning it on social media, but have little interest in prohibiting false political speech or expanding the definition of voter suppression. When social-media platforms are called before Congress, Republican representatives are usually more concerned about overbroad moderation than Democrats’ speech.
The only exception to this partisan interest gap seems to prove the rule that online electoral speech is treated differently. Accountability Virginia, a Democratic PAC, ran ads on Snapchat questioning Glenn Younkin’s commitment to gun rights. While some of the ads included disclaimers that identified Accountability Virginia as their source, they were designed to look like messages from the NRA and targeted to conservative-leaning areas of the state.
Virginia utility provider Dominion Energy donated money to the PAC. When Axios reported on their misleading ads, Dominion asked for a refund of its donation. Nevertheless, Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) sent a letter to Dominion complaining about the “voter suppression ads using misinformation about the Second Amendment.” The Snapchat ads, but not the mailers or the bus stunt, received the “voter suppression” label. While Senator Cotton excoriated Dominion for helping to fund the add, none of his ire was directed at Snapchat, which hosted the add despite its ban on “misleading” and “deceptive” political advertising.
This double standard for the Internet is unhealthy and unsustainable. It has already spurred the introduction of bills criminalizing false speech and satire likely protected by the Constitution. It creates partisan distrust and places social-media firms in an untenable position.
Government is given no greater constitutional leeway to police political misinformation online. While norms must carry the day, treating digital speech differently is unwise and unsustainable. The norms of American political discourse must either accommodate the same sort negative campaigning online as they do off–line or hold off-line speech to a higher standard. The longer self-restraint is expected to maintain the current double standard, the less it will restrain political disinformation in either space.