Why we have written to political parties to talk to them about disinformation

Misinformation is not a new problem, but with the pandemic it has become an emergency. Right now, the damned and the damned send us more than 1,000 suspicious content every day, five or six times more than before the coronavirus arrived. At the same time, politics is becoming increasingly interested in disinformation. In both Spanish and European institutions there are initiatives that want to legislate against this problem and at Maldita.es we believe that this regulation should be based on evidence and data, and not only on political positions .

We are already part of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Disinformation and now we also want to collaborate by contributing our knowledge. That’s why we would like to share with politicians some things we have learned fighting misinformation with the help of our community of ‘malditos ‘and ‘malditas‘:

• Consensus is needed: any measure against disinformation that comes only from a government or a party will not be effective. It will appear that he defends specific political interests and will not have credibility. A State problem needs State solutions and must include not only the opposition, but also civil society in the form of academics, journalists, media, fact-checkers…
• There are things that platforms should do and things that they should not: more can and should be demanded from large Internet companies. They should be more transparent with their decisions and processes (who decides that content is disinformation, how they decide, what the consequences are…), but they cannot and should not decide that something is illegal. That corresponds to justice.
• There is not always a culprit and they cannot always be found: the law cannot prosecute those who spread disinformation by mistake or because they themselves have believed it. It is also not easy, in most cases, to establish the exact origin of misinformation.
• We must educate: it is important to improve processes to combat disinformation, but nothing contributes more to fighting it than a public better prepared to identify it. Media literacy, technology education and the development of a critical culture regarding the information we receive must be a national priority.

Here we leave you the letter that we have sent to all the parliamentary groups and parties represented in the Congress of Deputies: