Freedom House South African civil society served as a bulwark against another regulator’s more disproportionate efforts to mitigate electoral misinformation. Proposed rules from the Film and Publication Board, which were withdrawn after civil society challenged their constitutionality, would have required companies to restrict access to vaguely defined “misinformation, disinformation, and fake news,” and imposed criminal penalties—including prison terms of up to two years—for people who spread allegedly prohibited content. Ahead of European Parliament elections in June, the EU used its unique market size and regulatory toolkit to compel social media platforms and search engines to increase transparency and mitigate electoral risks. The Digital Services Act (DSA), which entered into full force in February 2024, requires large platforms and search engines to provide detailed transparency reports, risk assessments, and researcher access to platform data, among other stipulations. In April 2024, the European Commission produced election guidelines that laid out the measures these companies should adopt under the DSA, such as labeling political ads and AI-generated content and ensuring that internal election-related teams were adequately resourced. Invoking the DSA, the commission opened formal proceedings against Meta and X for a host of possible violations, including Meta’s suspected noncompliance on limiting deceptive electoral advertising and X’s deficiencies in mitigating election-related risks. The EU’s nonobligatory Code of Practice on Disinformation served as a separate mechanism to strengthen information integrity. The code enlists signatories, including major platforms and advertising companies, to preemptively debunk and clearly label “digitally altered” content, set up transparency centers, and demonetize false and misleading information. These steps can help supply voters with the reliable information they need to make informed electoral decisions and fully participate in balloting. However, the voluntary nature of the code makes its effectiveness unclear and hard to track. With robust oversight and safeguards for free expression, information sharing between democratic governments and tech companies can improve users’ ability to access authoritative and reliable information. Government agencies may be privy to information about foreign actors, for example, that could provide context to companies as they seek to combat cyberattacks or coordinated inauthentic behavior. Federal agencies in the United States rolled back cooperation with platforms in a critical period leading up to the November 2024 elections, as they navigated legal challenges from state @freedomhouse Civil society’s involvement in South Africa’s initiatives helped ensure that decisions about online content were proportionate, specific, and protective of free expression. officials in Louisiana and Missouri. The two states, joined by private plaintiffs, had sued the federal government in 2022, claiming that its interactions with tech companies during the 2020 election period and the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to “censorship.” The Supreme Court dismissed the case in June 2024, ruling that the plaintiffs did not prove harm and noting that a lower court’s judgment in their favor had relied on “clearly erroneous” facts. The high court did not issue more detailed guidance on how agencies should communicate with platforms in alignment with constitutional free speech protections. As a result of the proceedings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed plans to increase transparency and set clearer guardrails around its engagement with platforms. Support for fact-checking and digital literacy The coverage period featured several positive initiatives aimed at facilitating voters’ access to authoritative information, such as through fact-checking programs, centralized hubs of resources, or digital literacy training. Taiwan’s civil society has established a transparent, decentralized, and collaborative approach to fact-checking and disinformation research that stands as a global model. Ahead of and during the country’s January 2024 elections, these fact-checking programs helped build trust in online information across the political spectrum and among diverse constituencies. The Cofacts platform allowed people to submit claims they encountered on social media or messaging platforms for fact-checking by Cofacts contributors, who include both professional fact-checkers and nonprofessional community members. During the election period, Cofacts found that false narratives about Taiwan’s foreign relations, particularly with the United States, were dominant on the messaging platform Line. Other local civil society organizations, such as IORG and Fake News Cleaner, also cultivated resistance to disinformation campaigns by freedomhouse.org 17