Digital Democracy: Exploring the Evolution of Social Media Election Integrity Policies

Public-facing policies of social media companies are currently one of the few ways that an ordinary user can gain further insights into the content moderation strategies of the platforms that they use on a daily basis. With the 2024 U.S. presidential election fast approaching, platform policies on election integrity are becoming crucial in communicating user expectations widely and maintaining procedural fairness in moderation decisions. This study aims to unravel the driving forces behind policy changes in the social media space. By tracking the evolution of leading social media companies’ policies–specifically, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook between the years of 2018 and 2023–we can gain valuable insights into the shifts in the overall approach to electoral content moderation. Through analysis of platform policy changes between the years of 2018 and 2023 and in-depth interviews with former employees, this study finds that the scope of election-related content regulation has increased over time. For example, the three companies observed added new terminology for emerging kinds of election-related speech such as “Misleading Information About Outcomes” and rarely removed categories in future iterations. This study also finds that Twitter was typically the first to increase the scope of its policy, with newer platforms such as TikTok imitating general policy components. While there is a general attitude amongst interviewees that having public-facing rules is important, there is also agreement that they do not always reflect the complexity of private, internal policies and practices for both researchers and users. Through interviews, it also became apparent that Facebook and Twitter have differing policy approaches in multiple respects, with the former characterized by a “Spirit of the Policy” approach, and the latter described as a “Letter of the Policy” approach. Securing elections is of paramount importance to the stability of our democracy. It is important that platforms are transparent about how they are moderating political content to ensure that electoral communications are being handled in a fair manner.