Study Finds 85% Fear Online Disinformation as Networks Target Elections

The survey, released as the United Nations announced a governance blueprint for platforms and regulators, found that 68% of respondents named social media as the place where fake news spreads most widely. Messaging apps came second at 38%.

Unesco's director general, Audrey Azoulay, told reporters that false information and hate speech online, accelerated and amplified by social media platforms, posed "major risks to social cohesion, peace and stability." She said regulation was urgently needed "to protect access to information ... while at the same time protecting freedom of expression and human rights."

The numbers are not abstract. The 16 countries surveyed are due to hold national elections next year, with a combined 2.5 billion voters.

Disinformation and real-world violence

When false claims move from feeds to streets, the damage is measurable. After three young girls were killed in a knife attack in the British town of Southport in July, false information about the attacker's name, religion and migration status gained traction within hours, according to CNBC. Police debunked the claims the day after they first emerged, saying the suspect was born in Britain, but the narrative had already spread.

Hannah Rose, a hate and extremism analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told CNBC that a post on X falsely named the perpetrator as "Ali al-Shakati," rumored to be a migrant of Muslim faith. By 3 p.m. the following day, the false name had over 30,000 mentions on X alone. ISD's analysis found that when users searched "Southport" on TikTok, the false name of the attacker was promoted in the platform's "Others Searched For" section, including eight hours after police confirmed the information was incorrect.

Far-right groups organized anti-migrant and anti-Islam protests that escalated into days of riots, with attacks on mosques, immigration centers and hotels housing asylum seekers. Joe Ondrak, research and tech lead for the UK at Logically, told CNBC that the false reports acted as "a way to rationalize and reinforce pre-existing prejudice and bias and speculation before any sort of established truth could get out there."

Telegram denied it was helping spread misinformation, saying its moderators were monitoring the situation and removing channels and posts calling for violence, which are not permitted under its terms of service. TikTok and X did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. The UK's Online Safety Act only comes into effect early next year, and the media regulator Ofcom has told platforms they should not wait for the new law to come into force.

State-linked networks and platform pressure

State-linked operations are a separate and larger problem. A CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies found that the Chinese government has built the world's largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians and businesses, at times threatening targets with violence. Meta said in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to the group in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Google told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years, while X has blocked hundreds of thousands of China "state-backed" or "state-linked" accounts, according to company blogs.

Russia has also been a longstanding source of disinformation on X. The Guardian reported that a video apparently showing Hamas thanking Ukraine for the sale of weapons was posted by an X account linked to the Russian mercenary group Wagner, and has since been viewed more than 300,000 times. The European Commission issued a letter to X owner Elon Musk warning him over alleged disinformation about the Hamas attack on Israel, including fake news and "repurposed old images."

Unesco's plan, based on seven principles drawn from more than 10,000 contributions across 134 countries over 18 months, calls for independent public regulators, effective content moderation in all languages, and greater transparency around algorithms and political advertising during elections and crises. It plans to organize a World Conference of Regulators in 2024.