House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., encouraged companies that advertise on social media to use their “tremendous leverage” to push platforms to crack down on disinformation. “Know your power,” Pelosi said at an online forum about Covid-19 and social media disinformation hosted by George Washington University on Tuesday.
“Advertisers are in a position, they have power to discourage platforms from amplifying dangerous and even life-threatening disinformation,” she said. “Some major advertisers and some not so major have begun to express objections to platform policies that promote voter fraud and violence ... We need to empower advertisers to continue to object and to use their power to hold social media companies accountable for their bad behavior. This is an undermining of democracy. It is a challenge to people’s health. It is just wrong.”