Preparing for the U.S. elections in November (original) (raw)

Aug 30, 2024

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illustration of a ballot box, a hand and an American flag

As we near Election Day in the United States, we’re building on our existing efforts and providing an update on our latest initiatives, tools and safeguards:

Continuing to help people find authoritative information

Leading up to Election Day, we’re focused on providing people with high-quality and reliable information from non-partisan organizations. Here are some of our features and partnerships to help people find information on candidates, voting processes and voting locations:

Our threat intelligence teams continue to monitor for influence operations and cyber attacks across our platforms and the wider ecosystem. Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) recently posted about APT42, an Iranian government-backed threat actor, and their targeted phishing campaigns against accounts associated with Israeli military and government officials, as well as individuals associated with the U.S. presidential election. When it comes to coordinated influence operations, we are not seeing dramatic shifts in tactics compared to previous election cycles. To the extent we’re seeing bad actors use AI, it is generally to increase the speed or scale of their information operations, rather than deploying new strategies. In response, we are utilizing AI tools to better detect problematic content and combat their efforts.

We also remain vigilant in tracking and addressing new content or techniques that could violate our long-standing product policies on topics such as manipulated media or demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust in democratic processes (for example, an ad that misleads users about voting dates). We enforce these policies regardless of political affiliation or content.

Increasing security protections for high-risk users

Understanding the patterns and trends of threat actors helps inform our approach to keeping all users and their personal information safe — but this is especially important for high-risk users during election cycles. We continue to develop best-in-class security technology and to offer free trainings and tools for high-risk users including elected officials, campaign workers, government officials, and journalists:

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In partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns, we've trained thousands of campaign workers and elections officials on Google's security tools.

Bringing more transparency to AI-generated content

For several years, we’ve invested in tools and labeling efforts to help people understand whether AI was used to alter or create the content they’re viewing online. We’re pleased to share these updates to our context tools and partnerships:

Continuing this work through Election Day

We’re proud that our platforms are used by people and campaigns of every background and belief, and that we've built tools to keep campaigns secure online. There have been dozens of elections around the world this year from India to the European Union to Mexico, where we did similar work. We'll continue to take steps to help keep users safe leading up to, during, and after this year’s U.S. election.