Are social media platforms ready for record elections in 2024?

Digital rights experts say social media platforms are ill-prepared for the inevitable rise in misinformation and hate speech.

From deepfake videos of Indonesia's presidential contenders to online hate speech directed at India's Muslims, social media misinformation has been rising ahead of a bumper election year, and experts say tech platforms are not ready for the challenge.

Voters in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and India go to the polls this year as more than 50 nations hold elections, including the United States where former president Donald Trump is looking to make a comeback.

Despite the high stakes and evidence from previous polls of how fake online content can influence voters, digital rights experts say social media platforms are ill-prepared for the inevitable rise in misinformation and hate speech.

Recent layoffs at big tech firms, new laws to police online content that have tied up moderators, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that make it easier to spread misinformation could hurt poorer countries more, said Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, an expert in platform safety.

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"Things have actually gotten worse since the last election cycle for many countries: the actors who abuse the platforms have gotten more sophisticated but the resources to tackle them haven't increased," said Diya, founder of Tech Global Institute.

"Because of the mass layoffs, priorities have shifted. Added to that is the large volume of new regulations ... platforms have to comply, so they don't have resources to proactively address the broader content ecosystem (and) the election integrity ecosystem," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.