US

Pennsylvania emerges as centre of misleading social media claims

Online misinformation stated multiple voting machines had gone down for hours

A Philadelphia election workers processes mail-in and absentee ballots for the general election at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Tuesday. Photograph:Matt Slocum/AP

Wed Nov 4 2020 - 04:38

Pennsylvania has emerged as a hotspot for online misinformation amid misleading posts on social media claiming multiple voting machines had gone down for hours.

In reality, a single voting machine jammed for just minutes on Tuesday morning at a precinct in Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton.

Facebook and Twitter scrambled to take down false posts about polling locations in Scranton, Philadelphia and beyond to minimise the spread of misinformation and prevent it from sowing doubt about the election process.

Misleading claims about voting in the key battleground state were shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter — even reaching to the Twitter feed of the president's son, Donald Trump Jr.

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"The fact that we are unlikely to know the result of that pivotal race tonight means that any incidents will receive disproportionate attention because there won't be a resolution to the race," said Emerson Brooking, a disinformation fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington think tank.

Results in the closely watched state might be delayed because of the surge of postal votes this year, even though that delay does not indicate a problem with the vote.

Conservative influencers

Conservative social-media influencers and websites spread a video purporting to show voting machine outages in the Scranton Cultural Centre at the Masonic Temple throughout the late afternoon and evening. In fact, just one machine had only briefly been jammed and was restored within minutes on Tuesday morning, Lackawanna County spokesman Joseph D'Arienzo said.

Twitter and Facebook also removed a false post from an Instagram user who claimed to be discarding hundreds of ballots cast for Mr Trump while working at a polling place in Erie County.

"The person making the statements does not work in any way with Erie County or have any part of Erie County's election process," the Erie County Board of Elections chairman Carl J Anderson III said in a statement. "In fact, the individual is not a registered voter and is not believed to be a resident of Erie County, Pennsylvania."

Facebook said it confirmed with authorities that the claims were inaccurate and was working on removing the posts. Twitter removed screenshots and short videos of the claim, which was originally posted on Instagram by the person claiming to be a poll worker, though not before it gained some traction on the platform, including a retweet from Mr Trump Jr. – AP

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