Tumblr launches campaign against fake news for upcoming US elections

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After Facebook, the Tumblr social network – owned by Automattic since August 2019 – also wants to participate in the fight against fake news in preparation for the next American elections in November 2020. In an article published on January 6, 2020, The Verge reveals that this initiative is primarily intended for young Internet users considered to be more gullible in the face of the flow of information and large-scale manipulation.

Six educational videos

For this project, Tumblr has partnered with the English NGO Ditch The Label which fights against cyber-bullying. The campaign consists of six videos which tackle different themes such as fake news, the authenticity of the content and cyberbullying. They are already available on Tumblr.

The content is intended to be fun and incorporates elements of language such as GIFS or memes to facilitate understanding by young Internet users. "It's more relevant to our audience"Justified Victoria The McCallough, director of public policy for Tumblr. These videos are meant to be concrete and try to explain how to spot false content aimed at manipulating the opinion of Internet users."How these people spread this type of content can be quite difficult to detect"said Jeff D'Onofrio, CEO of Tumblr.

 Tech giants launch initiatives

If Tumblr is involved in this fight, it is not by chance. In March 2018, he announced that he had discovered 84 accounts linked to the Russian government via the Internet Research Agency (IRA), an organization linked to the Kremlin. These accounts were allegedly used in a disinformation campaign during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Tumblr is not the first Tech player to launch an initiative for the upcoming US elections. In September 2019, Facebook and Microsoft are joining forces with major universities to fight against deepfakes by providing a set of data. The goal is to launch a detection challenge with a prize of $ 10 billion. Amazon joined this program in late October 2019.

Elections generally represent a period conducive to the circulation of false information on the internet, at the risk of it influencing the ballot. During the 2016 US presidential campaign, rumors had circulated about the state of the Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton. Triggered by Donald Trump and expertly fed by the American channel Fox News, the rumor ran that the Democratic candidate was seriously ill. A completely false statement.

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