This report provides a timeline of the mechanisms put in place by major digital platforms (Facebook, Google, Tik Tok and Twitter) to fight against disinformation between January 2020 and February 2021.
At the start of the pandemic, these platforms established a system that emphasized authoritative content on matters relating to health and public policy. This effort to highlight official and reliable content was also later carried out in the context of the U.S. elections and the vaccination campaign. In addition, over the past year, platforms have regularly strengthened their policies related to misleading and hateful content. These regulatory changes ultimately led to the suspension of Donald Trump’s account on various digital platforms. Warning messages intended to flag misleading content have also been introduced on these platforms. Mechanisms for reporting questionable content and for referring users to reliable sources have been facilitated in order to fight against the wave of disinformation that emerged in early 2020.
