There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the role social media disinformation may play in upcoming elections in the U.S. and Europe, but it’s also a problem in countries where it’s attracted less attention—from the media, and arguably from the companies whose platforms play host to the disinformation itself.
The Mozilla Foundation is best known for steering the open-source Mozilla project, which makes the Firefox browser and other apps, but last month it set up a research division called Open Source Research & Investigations. The division’s first task is to investigate the influence of online platforms on elections in the Global South. And although it’s also looking at YouTube, TikTok is its first big focus.
