At Snap, we have always believed that civic engagement is one of the most powerful forms of self-expression. As a platform that helps people express themselves and has significant reach with new and first-time voters, we make it a priority to help our community get access to accurate and trusted information about news and world events, including where and how they can vote in their local election. With over 50 countries heading to the polls in 2024, we’re reconvening our longstanding election integrity team, including misinformation, political advertising and cybersecurity experts, to monitor all relevant developments for the coming elections. In addition to their important work, we want to share our plan for this year’s elections.

Designed to prevent the spread of misinformation

From our earliest days, our founders designed Snapchat to be very different from other social media platforms. Snapchat doesn’t open to a feed of endless, unvetted content and it doesn’t allow people to live stream. We don’t programme our algorithms to favour misinformation and we don’t recommend groups. Instead, we moderate content before it can be amplified to a large audience, and we feature news from trusted media partners around the world, from The Wall Street Journal in the US to Le Monde in France to Times Now in India. 

Our Community Guidelines, which apply equally to all Snapchat accounts, have always prohibited the spread of misinformation and purposefully misleading content, like deepfakes — including content that undermines the integrity of elections. We have an even higher standard for any content that we would amplify in the parts of the app where Snapchatters can view public content. As technologies have evolved, we have updated our policies to cover all content formats — whether created by a human or generated by artificial intelligence. If we find this type of content proactively, or if it is reported to us, we immediately remove it — further reducing its ability to spread on Snapchat or other platforms. 

Over the years, our different platform design decisions have helped us protect Snapchat from becoming a place where fake news and conspiracy theories could run rampant. For example, during the last US midterm election cycle in 2022, just over 1,000 pieces of false information were removed globally, which our teams typically took action on in under an hour. Our goal is to continue to keep this volume as low as possible heading into 2024. 

Additional safeguards for political advertising

We have also taken a unique approach to political ads, protecting against election interference and misinformation. We use human review on every political ad and work with an independent, non-partisan fact-checking organisation to make sure they meet our standards for transparency and accuracy. Our vetting process includes a thorough check for any misleading use of AI to create deceptive images or content. 

In order to be approved to run, an ad must clearly disclose who paid for it, and we don’t allow ads to be paid for by foreign governments or any individuals or entities located outside of the country where the election is taking place. We believe it’s in the public’s interest to see which political ads are approved to run and keep a Political Ads Library.  

We will remain vigilant to ensure that Snapchat remains a space for responsible, accurate, and helpful news and information. We also want to continue to empower our community to participate in their local elections, and we will share more details about our plans to help Snapchatters register to vote in the months ahead.