{"id":942830,"date":"2026-10-27T14:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/942830\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T14:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:40:10","slug":"ai-driven-disinformation-running-rampant-on-social-media-before-us-midterms-experts-warn-us-midterm-elections-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/942830\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-driven disinformation running rampant on social media before US midterms, experts warn | US midterm elections 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media feeds are awash with an unprecedented flood of AI<\/a>-driven disinformation ahead of November\u2019s US midterm elections<\/a>, according to experts, who warn many posts are probably \u201cslipping through the cracks\u201d.<\/p>\n

As tens of millions of Americans prepare to cast their vote, social media companies have scaled back their efforts to protect voters from lies meant to manipulate elections.<\/p>\n

While the backlash against Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal<\/a> prompted social media giants to bolster their trust and safety operations, a counter-backlash from the right over fears of speech restrictions \u2013 which intensified after Elon Musk\u2019s takeover of X, formerly Twitter, and the election of Donald Trump<\/a> in 2024 \u2013 has led to significant layoffs from relevant teams.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever<\/a> to launch a disinformation campaign. And platforms are increasingly relying on AI, rather than human intervention, to respond.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can run an information operation now with quality that was impossible in 2016 for super, super cheap,\u201d said Frances Haugen, a former Facebook<\/a> data engineer turned whistleblower and advocate for transparency and accountability in big tech. Operatives playing dirty tricks can get around content moderation rules \u201cbecause you can just keep tweaking the post a little bit each time you create them, and some of them are going to get through\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

Campaigns from Pennsylvania<\/a> to Texas<\/a> have been scrambling to respond to lies that have surfaced, and spread rapidly, online. Unlike previous elections, they find themselves in a quandary: who, exactly, do they turn to when fabrications and falsehoods propagate?<\/p>\n

Meta Platforms, the Facebook and Instagram owner, and X did not respond to requests for comment. YouTube<\/a>, owned by Google, said all its users are subject to the same guidelines.<\/p>\n

James Talarico<\/a>, the high-flying Democrat running for US Senate in Texas, took time off from campaigning earlier this month to recover from the flu. But many social media feeds hosted another \u2013 false \u2013 reason for his absence: that he was supposedly being treated at a mental health facility in Ohio.<\/p>\n

The claim was a complete fabrication, pushed by a rightwing \u201cprovocateur\u201d<\/a> who published a deceptively edited phone call with a hospital staffer. Talarico\u2019s campaign released security-camera video showing him at home in Texasand the candidate publicly clarified<\/a> he had never even been to Ohio.<\/p>\n

But the lie circulated \u2013 and was stoked \u2013 for several days.<\/p>\n

James Talarico, a Senate candidate, speaks to attenders at the Voto Latino \u2018Ready, Go, Vote,\u2019 rally on Sunday in Weslaco, Texas, before the midterm elections. Photograph: Michael Gonzalez\/AP<\/p>\n

The Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA) tracked<\/a> its propagation, and how the misinformation mutated as it was picked up by conservative Spanish-language media. What began as a viral lie<\/a> about Talarico being hospitalized in Ohio became a false claim in Spanish that he had attempted suicide.<\/p>\n

The case \u201cillustrates a recurring challenge in countering election disinformation\u201d, DDIA\u2019s researchers wrote. Lies evolve and shift as they spread, \u201cmaking the original correction insufficient to address every version of the story\u201d.<\/p>\n

Social media platforms enforce their terms of service \u201cmore congruently\u201d in English than other languages including Spanish, according to Roberta Braga, the founder and executive director of DDIA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot less guardrails in place from the companies to deal with Spanish language, especially now that they\u2019ve walked back a lot of their own investments in content moderation, and they\u2019ve moved toward doing community-centered content moderation, like Community Notes-style things,\u201d said Braga. \u201cNow that they\u2019re using AI to do a lot of the content moderation, even more is likely slipping through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken Paxton<\/a>, Talarico\u2019s Republican opponent in Texas, also launched a campaign advert<\/a> earlier this year using<\/a> AI-generated footage of Talarico \u2013 a Presbyterian seminarian \u2013 supposedly rewriting the Bible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Texans are fed up with these kind of lies in our politics,\u201d Talarico told NBC News<\/a> in September. \u201cThese AI deepfake ads don\u2019t add anything to our civic discourse. They don\u2019t do anything to elucidate the choice that\u2019s in front of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online hit squads behind election disinformation once operated on the fringes. Today, their work may be amplified by official government sources.<\/p>\n

When viral posts on X and rightwing blogs claimed that an undocumented immigrant arrested in central Pennsylvania was an active field worker and canvasser for Democrat Janelle Stelson\u2019s congressional campaign, staffers set the truth<\/a> sprinting, trying to to catch up with a lie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democratic candidate Janelle Stelson speaks at a campaign event on 23 September in York Haven, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Marc Levy\/AP<\/p>\n

As they did, however, an official statement<\/a> from the Department of Homeland Security amplified the claim. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien to work on a congressional campaign, let alone a pervert who exposed himself in public,\u201d declared Charles Wall, the deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n

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But the campaign released records showing that the immigrant, Chimaobim Adedayo Igbojekwe, had no paid position on the campaign, despite an initial police incident report stating that Igbojekwe claimed to be a campaign worker. They hold the claim provably false.<\/p>\n

The campaign of Stelson\u2019s opponent, Republican congressman Scott Perry, continues to run ads<\/a> with the claim.<\/p>\n

The Stelson campaign sent cease-and-desist letters to the media. A Fox News reporter took down a post on X<\/a> about the indecent exposure arrest. Activists at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington launched a complaint accusing the DHS of violating the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of government employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has made clear that he intends<\/a> to interfere<\/a> in the elections,\u201d said Nora Benavidez, a civil rights and free speech attorney with Free Press, a non-profit advocating for media independence. Trump \u201chas leveraged agencies across the federal government, whether it\u2019s the US Postal Service or DHS \u2013 you name it\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n

Stelson\u2019s campaign has yet to complain directly to the social media platforms: Meta\u2019s Facebook, Elon Musk\u2019s X, Google\u2019s YouTube or others. But a spokesperson said<\/a> the campaign \u201ccontinues to consider every legal avenue to fight the false claims in Perry\u2019s ads\u201d.<\/p>\n

The dominant social media platforms do have clear rules \u2013 based on specific, limited definitions \u2013 on how to handle misinformation driven by AI during election campaigns.<\/p>\n

Meta requires advertisers to disclose the use of synthetic images and AI-generated content with election ads, and enforces automated labeling on AI-generated images identified through Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) metadata. It also bans posts and ads that misrepresent voting dates, locations or legal requirements, as well as threats of violence.<\/p>\n

But the company does little active moderation of political commentary, beyond the exclusion of unsolicited political content from its recommended posts. An analysis<\/a> by Free Press noted that Meta had narrowed its historical restrictions in 2023 to allow debate around the legitimacy of past election cycles.<\/p>\n

In 2023, YouTube also stopped<\/a> removing content that falsely claimed the 2020 election or other past US presidential elections were marred by \u201cwidespread fraud, errors or glitches\u201d, stating that the removals had curbed misinformation, but also had a chilling effect on political speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll users\u201d of YouTube, including political candidates and campaigns, \u201care subject to the same community guidelines \u2026 and have access to the same public reporting tools,\u201d according to the platform.<\/p>\n

It defines election misinformation narrowly, however: content that misleads voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting or false claims that could materially discourage voting are banned. Claims that a candidate on the ballot is somehow ineligible, or calls to hack a polling site\u2019s computers or incite violence at election locations, are also forbidden. \u201cWe also review government requests closely to determine if content should be removed because it violates a law or our policies,\u201d YouTube\u2019s spokesperson wrote in response to inquiries.<\/p>\n

Google has a likeness detection system<\/a> and allows civic leaders to request removal of a video when an AI-generated image falsely depicts their words or deeds. But a direct lie that falls outside these lines could propagate without intervention.<\/p>\n

Instead of relying on takedowns, Google prefers to amplify authoritative news outlets and election boards in search queries and underneath high-stakes civic videos via contextual \u201cinformation panels\u201d.<\/p>\n

X<\/a>, formerly known as Twitter, abandoned internal safety reviews after its acquisition by Musk, replacing<\/a> it with the crowdsourced \u201cCommunity Notes\u201d program. Its civic integrity policy bars false information about how to vote and suppression schemes. The platform also supposedly restricts synthetic media designed to mislead, though experts argue that the policy amounts to little without enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you stop being able to focus on content because the AI will just slightly tweak it until it gets through, you have to focus on what are the systems of distribution,\u201d Haugen said. \u201cWhat are the biases? What are the ways we have feedback systems, cycles, that allow the community to provide feedback, that allows it to be damped down?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media feeds are awash with an unprecedented flood of AI-driven disinformation ahead of November\u2019s US midterm elections,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-942830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}