The U.S. Census Bureau has asked tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter to hel...
NEW YORK - The U.S. Census Bureau has asked tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter to help it fend off “fake news” campaigns it fears could disrupt the upcoming 2020 count, according to Census officials and multiple sources briefed on the matter.
The sources, who asked not to be named, said evidence included increasing chatter on platforms like “4chan” by domestic and foreign networks keen to undermine the survey. The census, they said, is a powerful target because it shapes U.S. election districts and the allocation of more than $800 billion a year in federal spending.
The bureau has also embarked on an online landgrab to control census look-alike websites, according to Census officials. These sites could end up in the hands of people who want to dissuade some portions of the population from responding to the survey. The Census Bureau, until now, has kept mostly mum about how it plans to counter disinformation. The efforts highlight the challenges posed by the internet age to the decennial gathering of data on America’s population.
Thompson said he had invited data expert danah boyd to speak to top officials in 2016. boyd, who stylizes her name lowercase, said she was seeing chatter on the dark web in white supremacist and other communities about wanting to disrupt the count, according to Thompson and two other people in the room, who declined to be named. boyd declined to be interviewed about her presentation.
According to notes from the 2017 meetings reviewed by Reuters, Google told Census it would consider creating a bespoke census-related search project. Twitter also agreed to help mitigate misinformation, according to the notes.
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