Rise of right-wing apps seen worsening midterm disinformation

The slew of new apps and sites present a new information landscape for voters as November’s midterm elections approach and Democrats seek to defend their slim majorities in Congress. After being routinely bombarded with discredited claims about fraudulent ballots, destroyed ballots, voting machine malfunctions and other unproven conspiracy theories, nearly 80 percent of Republicans continue to believe that President Joe Biden did not win a legitimate victory in 2020. 

The picture is about to get much worse, as the new apps promising to be anti-Big Tech, anti-censorship and pro-free speech are attracting “die-hards,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a nonprofit group that monitors conservative media outlets. 

By promising users unfettered platforms to say and promote whatever they please, these right-leaning apps and sites will likely become places to start, nurture and promote disinformation about the midterm elections that may even lead to violence, Carusone said. 

“And so, what is unique in this cycle is that you now have places that are poised to not just serve as petri dishes for misinformation, but also have the distribution capacity to prime the pump a little bit to get some of those smears started” that could jump over to mainstream media, Carusone said. 

The mechanism by which social media posts and commentary drive news and vice-versa already is well established, said Emily Dreyfuss, senior editor at the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center.