Poll: 60% of Democrats Want Big Tech to Do More to Stop ‘Misinformation’

A new poll reveals that 60% of Democrats want social media companies to do more to stop “misinformation,” while two-thirds of Republicans think that Big Tech is already doing too much.

The poll, conducted by Gallup for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found stark differences between Democrats and Republicans in their view of the election, and their trust of the media. About nine in ten Democrats thought “the democratic voting process worked well,” but nine in ten Republicans did not.

The public is largely divided in their assessment of how major internet companies dealt with trying to stop the spread of false information about the election. Forty percent say they did not go far enough, 33% believe they went too far, and 25% think they were about right.

Two-thirds of Republicans think the companies went too far, while 60% of Democrats do not think they went far enough. In addition to stricter content moderation, Twitter banned political ads, and Facebook restricted them in the final week of the election and banned them after Election Day.

Americans’ opinions about major internet companies’ actions to limit election misinformation generally are in line with their opinions about ways to stop misinformation. A September survey found 52% of Americans said major internet companies were “not tough enough” in removing content from their websites and apps that some people consider harmful. Half as many, 26%, thought they were “too tough.” Partisans’ views were much like the latest data, with a majority of Republicans saying the companies were too tough and a majority of Democrats saying they were not tough enough.

Only 2% of Democrats thought social media companies went too far.

One of the most notorious examples of “misinformation” was actually a reliable news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which included emails linking him to shady business dealings with a Chinese energy company.

Hunter Biden and the Biden-Harris transition team confirmed Wednesday that he was under federal investigation.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.