{"id":1893,"date":"2020-09-29T07:45:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T07:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pearlfm.co.ug\/?p=1893"},"modified":"2022-01-19T12:06:33","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T12:06:33","slug":"us-2020-election-social-medias-nightmare-scenario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/2020\/09\/29\/us-2020-election-social-medias-nightmare-scenario\/","title":{"rendered":"US 2020 election: Social media’s nightmare scenario"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an election scenario that is giving social media company bosses nightmares.<\/p>\n

The period between the polls closing and the declared result usually takes a few hours.<\/p>\n

But this time it’s likely to take days – perhaps even weeks. Millions of postal votes will take time to process.<\/p>\n

Social media companies believe this period – of claim and counterclaim – could push the US over the edge.<\/p>\n

If both Donald Trump and Joe Biden declare themselves the winner, there are fears of violence between the already polarised communities of the US.<\/p>\n

And all of this could be played out on social media.<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said he was “worried”.<\/p>\n

On Facebook he wrote: “With our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalised, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”<\/p>\n

In what may well be a first, several of the Big Tech companies have been working together to “scenario plan” different results of the vote.<\/p>\n

They’ve essentially been war-gaming election night.<\/p>\n

There’s one scenario that worries the tech bosses: postal votes are expected to be weighted towards the Democratic candidate, while voting at the ballot box is expected to favour the incumbent Republican.<\/p>\n

This is because Mr Trump has told his supporters to vote in person. He says the postal voting process is rigged (there is no evidence of this).<\/p>\n

The Democrats, by contrast, have no such problem with encouraging postal voting. As a result, these two ways of voting have become politically skewed.<\/p>\n

This could create what is being coined as a “red mirage” on the night of the poll and a “blue shift” in the days after.<\/p>\n

In this scenario, Mr Trump would “win” on the day because ballot box votes will have been counted.<\/p>\n

But then, after the postal votes slowly rack up, Mr Biden would claw away at Mr Trump’s lead.<\/p>\n

Disputed result<\/strong><\/p>\n

What would Mr Trump do? Well almost everything he’s said and tweeted thus far suggests he’d declare victory – or at the very least question the result.<\/p>\n

“[We] must know election results on the night of the election, not days, months, or even years later!” he tweeted in July.<\/p>\n

His constant talk of postal voting fraud also points to him questioning the final tally.<\/p>\n

And last week he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.<\/p>\n

In fact, Mr Trump has already done something similar. During the Florida mid-term elections of 2018, as recounts were beginning to haul in a Republican majority, he tweeted the following:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So the evidence points one way. Mr Trump doesn’t want to hang around for all those postal votes to be counted.<\/p>\n

This is where the Big Tech bosses come in.<\/p>\n

If Mr Trump is going to declare victory, it’s likely he’ll do it via Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

And these platforms have said – unequivocally – that they will not allow him to do that.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Election fraud in the US is believed to be very rare<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Twitter has said it will “label or remove misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election\u2026 eg claiming victory before election results have been certified”.<\/p>\n

Facebook has said it will reject ads from US political campaigns prematurely claiming victory before results have been declared – and remove disinformation about the vote.<\/p>\n

On Friday, news site Axios reported that Google would block election ads after election day as a response to this same concern.<\/p>\n

So we now have this possibility: Mr Trump claims victory, but is blocked from spreading the word on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an election scenario that is giving social media company bosses nightmares. The period between the polls closing and the declared result usually takes a few hours. But this time it’s likely to take days – perhaps even weeks. Millions of postal votes will take time to process. Social media companies believe this period – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bunyoro-health","8":"category-uncategorized"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3630,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/3630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}