Platforms and the Election: An Autopsy (A November 19 Virtual Panel)
By Mozilla | Nov. 17, 2020
The latest installment of the MozFest Dialogues & Debates series will explore how internet platforms coped — and are coping — with U.S. election disinformation.
Ahead of the November 3 presidential election, the internet’s biggest platforms prepared themselves for a whirlwind disinformation. Misleading headlines, outright lies, false claims of victory, and fake content had the potential to go viral — and mislead millions of voters.
Now, in the days after the election, the world is still reckoning with whether or not platforms did their part. How effective were specific tactics, like adding content labels, rejecting ads, and halting recommendations? How are platforms coping with the current spike in disinformation about the results? And what can we learn for future elections?
On Thursday, November 19, Mozilla will host a virtual MozFest Dialogues & Debates to explore these questions and others. Audience members are able to submit their questions ahead of time by tweeting @mozilla with the hashtag #DialoguesAndDebates.
Our 40-minute panel will feature:
Ifeoma Ozoma (@ifeomaozoma), the Founder and Principal of Earthseed, a consulting firm supporting individuals, organizations, and companies on issues relating to public policy, health misinformation, and related communications. She is a tech policy expert with experience leading global public policy partnerships, public policy related content safety development, and U.S. Federal, State, and International policymaker engagement at Pinterest, Facebook, and Google. Ifeoma’s health misinformation initiatives have been lauded by the World Health Organization, the Washington Post’s Editorial Board, and the New York Times. Ifeoma is also on the First Draft Inc, Board of Directors, a member of the Brookings Institution’s Transatlantic Working Group on Disinformation, and a member of The Washington Post's Technology 202 Network.
Karen Kornbluh (@karenkornbluh), who leads the German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative to ensure technology supports democracies around the globe; and as chair of the Open Technology Fund, a government-funded nonprofit advancing global Internet freedom. She was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris during the Obama Administration. There she spearheaded the first global Internet Policymaking Principles, gained OECD agreement to provide open access to its data, and launched the OECD Gender Initiative. Karen is also a former Mozilla Fellow.
Davey Alba (@daveyalba), technology reporter covering online disinformation for The Times. Earlier she was a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News, where her story on how Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, used Facebook to fuel the drug war in the country, won both a Livingston Award and a Mirror Award.
And moderator Ashley Boyd (@ashleyboyd) , who leads Mozilla’s work to fuel the open internet movement and mobilize millions to stand up for a free, open web. Ashley's mission is ambitious: making the health of the internet a mainstream issue. It is also vital: as centralization, surveillance, exclusion and other online threats proliferate, we need a movement to keep the web a global public resource.
MozFest Dialogues & Debates is Mozilla’s our speaker series that usually occurs in-person each year. We’re expanding the series into virtual terrain, to bring internet users the information they need to understand and advocate for a healthy and humane digital world. Watch past MozFest Dialogues & Debates here.