Election disinformation campaigns targeted voters of color in 2020. Experts expect 2024 to be worse

CHICAGO — Leading up to the 2020 election, Facebook ads targeting Latino and Asian American voters described Joe Biden as a communist. “ What we saw in 2020, unfortunately, will probably be fairly mild in comparison to what we will see in the months leading up to 2024.” A growing subset of communities of color, especially immigrants for whom English is not their first language, are questioning the integrity of U.S. voting processes and subscribing to Trump’s lies of a stolen 2020 election, said Jenny Liu, mis/disinformation policy manager at the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The Brookings Institute, a nonprofit think tank, found examples of mistranslations in Colombian, Cuban and Venezuelan WhatsApp groups, where “progressive” was translated to “progresista,” which carries “far-left connotations that are closer to the Spanish words ‘socialista’ and ‘comunista.’” How disinformation spreads Disinformation, often in languages like Spanish, Mandarin or Hindi, flows onto social media apps like WhatsApp and WeChat heavily used by communities of color. Minority communities that believe their views and perspectives aren’t represented by the mainstream are likely to “retreat into more private spaces” found on messaging apps or groups on social media sites like Facebook, Trauthig said. Changes in policies like WhatsApp launching a “Communities” function connecting multiple groups and expanding group chat sizes may also “have big implications for how quickly misinformation will spread on the platform,” she said.