Exclusive: Tech Companies Are Failing to Keep Elections Safe, Rights Groups Say

in living memory, tech companies are failing their biggest test. Such is the charge that has been leveled by at least 160 rights groups across 55 countries, which are collectively calling on tech platforms to urgently adopt greater measures to safeguard people and elections amid rampant online disinformation and hate speech.

“Despite our and many others’ engagement, tech companies have failed to implement adequate measures to protect people and democratic processes from tech harms that include disinformation, hate speech, and influence operations that ruin lives and undermine democratic integrity,” reads the organizations’, shared exclusively with TIME by the Global Coalition for Tech Justice, a consortium of civil society groups, activists, and experts.

In July, the coalition reached out to leading tech companies, among them Meta , Google , TikTok, and X , and asked them to establish transparent, country-specific plans for the upcoming election year, in which more than half of the world’s population would be going to the polls across some 65 countries. But those calls were largely ignored, says Mona Shtaya, the campaigns and partnerships manager at Digital Action, the convenor of the Global Coalition for Tech Justice.

“Because they are legally and politically accountable in the U.S., they are taking more strict measures to protect people and their democratic rights in the U.S.,” says Shtaya, who is also the Corporate Engagement Lead at Digital Action. “But in the rest of the world, there are different contexts that could lead to the spread of disinformation, misinformation, hateful content, gender-based violence, or smear campaigns against certain political parties or even vulnerable communities.”.

Rather than invest in more extensive content moderation, the Global Coalition for Tech Justice contends that tech platforms are doing just the opposite. “In the past year, Meta, Twitter, and YouTube have collectively removed 17 policies aimed at guarding against hate speech and disinformation,” Shtaya says, referencingby the non-profit media watchdog Free Press.

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