Disinformation Threatens Other Elections After U.S. Voting Ends

The closing of polls in the U.S. will inevitably herald the start of postmortem investigations into the roles Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s YouTube played in the vote. The problem with a postmortem is that, by definition, it suggests the issue is dead. But while the U.S. presidential election might be over for another four years, a dozen other national elections—from Belize to Myanmar to Nigeria to Romania—will take place this year.

And disinformation, propaganda, and fake news are as big a problem elsewhere as they are in the U.S. In some places it’s even more severe. Facebook Inc. subsidiary WhatsApp—which is end-to-end encrypted, making it impossible for moderators to see the content of messages—prevails in countries such as Brazil and India.