Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) joined Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), U.S. Representative Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), and 23 colleagues in calling on tech CEOs to act on the rampant spread of Spanish and other non-English language disinformation across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Nextdoor.
“We write to express our serious concerns regarding the increasing rate of Spanish and other non-English language disinformation across digital platforms, and the lack of transparency regarding efforts to limit the spread of this harmful content for all languages,” the lawmakers wrote in letters to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Nextdoor, raising the alarm on the lack of action combating this disinformation.
“There is significant evidence that your Spanish-language moderation efforts are not keeping pace, with widespread accounts of viral content promoting human smuggling, vaccine hoaxes, and election misinformation,” the lawmakers continued. “Congress has a moral duty to ensure that all social media users have the same access to truthful and trustworthy content regardless of the language they speak at home or use to communicate online.”
The first and only Latina in the Senate, Cortez Masto is committed to combating misinformation. In May, she sent a letter to the Biden Administration urging them to combat health disinformation and ensure accurate vaccine information reaches Latino communities nationwide. The Senator also called on online platforms like Facebook and Twitter to take further measures to stop the spread of voter-related disinformation and led bipartisan legislation to fund research in detecting “deepfakes,” online videos that realistically mimic a person’s identity.
The full text of the letter to Facebook can be found HERE.
The full text of the letter to Twitter can be found HERE.
The full text of the letter to YouTube can be found HERE.
The full text of the letter to Nextdoor can be found HERE.
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