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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Kari Paul in San Francisco

Disinformation in Spanish is prolific on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube despite vows to act

A man wearing a shirt and jacket with American flag designs on it stands at a protest holding two signs. One demands a forensic audit of the 2020 US election. The other reads 'Trump won. Stolen election fraud'.
Disinformation, such as that pushing the ‘big lie’ that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, is continuing to spread on social media in English and Spanish. Photograph: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

Last year, US lawmakers urged the CEOs of major tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to do more to combat disinformation spreading in Spanish, warning that inaccurate information on key issues such as vaccines and the presidential election was proliferating on their platforms.

“There is significant evidence that your Spanish-language moderation efforts are not keeping pace, with widespread accounts of viral content promoting human smuggling, vaccine hoaxes, and election misinformation,” the lawmakers wrote in a July 2021 letter. “Congress has a moral duty to ensure that all social media users have the same access to truthful and trustworthy content regardless of the language they speak at home or use to communicate online.”

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