Google promises to remove search suggestions that might seem political — even if they’re true

[ThinkingSapien]

Google promises to remove search suggestions that might seem political — even if they’re true - The Verge

[…] Google is changing its autocomplete policies to theoretically weed out one particular category of suggestion: “Election related predictions” that could be interpreted as favoring a particular candidate or political party.

The new policy is extremely short, so I’ll just give you the whole thing right here:

Elections related predictions

We don’t allow predictions that could be interpreted as a position for or against any candidate or political party, nor which could be interpreted as claims about the participation in or integrity of the electoral process.

[…]
The company offered a few examples in a blog post today, and they seem heavy-handed in how “balanced” they’re trying to be: Google will apparently remove both the phrases “You can vote by phone” and “You can’t vote by phone,” even though one of those things is true and the other is a lie.

[…]

With Autocomplete, we primarily rely on automated systems to approximate our policies and prevent violating predictions from appearing. If any predictions slip through, and if we get reports or otherwise identify violations, then our trust and safety team enforces those policies.

Also, similar but unbiased searches like “can you vote by phone?” may still get autocompleted. If you see a prediction that violates Google’s policies, you can report them here.

Twitter expands misinformation rules to cover premature election results - The Verge

On Thursday, Twitter announced a more detailed set of rules to combat misinformation ahead of the US election in November. Starting September 17th, the platform will label or remove tweets involving election rigging or premature election results, treating those categories as particularly likely to cause immediate harm.

[…]

“The conversation happening on Twitter is never more important than during elections,” Twitter said in a blog post rolling out the new policy. “Twitter is where people come to hear directly from elected officials and candidates for office, it’s where they come to find breaking news, and increasingly, it’s an integral source for information on when and how to vote in elections.”

Last week, Facebook also announced that it would label posts from candidates prematurely declaring victory. Facebook also said that it would not accept new political ads a week before the November election takes place, and it would expand its work to label posts that could suppress the vote. Twitter banned all political advertising last year.