Twitter and other social media sites can be awash in misinformation about elections.

Election misinformation is spreading across social media platforms such as Twitter and Meta Platform’s Facebook as the U.S. midterm election turnout continues Wednesday in key battleground states, experts said.

Online disinformation experts have tried to refute misleading narratives circulating in the run-up to the election, such as that only the results announced Tuesday night were legitimate.

Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst at the nonprofit Common Cause, said at a press conference on Wednesday, “We’ve seen the bad guys, and we’ll continue to see them… just the election night results. We will spread the narrative that is effective,” he said.

As major battleground states like Arizona continue to tally results, “we could see a spike in misinformation about counting,” she said.

This proliferation of content raises questions about how social media platforms enforce their policies against misleading content about elections.

Common Cause, which monitors efforts to suppress voters on social media, said on Tuesday that Twitter was taking no action on posts it flagged as problematic.

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Twitter, now owned by billionaire Elon Musk, laid off about half of its staff last week, including many employees responsible for curating and promoting authoritative information about the service.

The company, which has lost many members of its communications team, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Steiner said some online posts circulated videos without context, woven into narratives meant to question the legitimacy of the election.

A widely circulated video of a poll worker marking the required initials on a Wisconsin ballot, misinterpreted as a Philadelphia poll worker filling out a ballot, garnered attention on Twitter and TikTok. rice field.

In the battleground state of Arizona, problems with dozens of electronic ballot counters were also seized Tuesday by former US President Donald Trump and his followers, with social media and elsewhere blaming Democrats for electoral fraud. It falsely claimed to be evidence.