Political posts/general election

[AdamRyan]

@MNHQ I was wondering if you had any thoughts you could share around how to handle political posting and misinformation in the run up to the GE.

People are very passionate about their side, which is admirable and needs to be encouraged. But there are already mumblings about potential risk of misinformation being spread and affecting the GE result. E.g.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/call-for-action-on-deepfakes-as-fears-grow-among-mps-over-election-threat

Is there anything we can do to minimise misinformation being spread via the site while at the same time supporting debate?

Maybe reporting? I know twitter has their "community noting" system now.

Surely, as a discussion forum, posters seeing misinformation being spread by others, will challenge it during the thread.
Isn't that what debate is all about ?
I don't want MN to censor all the posts. I want to try to convince people that have (what I perceived to be) damaging views, challenged, and helped to see some actual evidence of things that contradicts their thinking - maybe moves them out of whatever echo chamber they are in. That will do far more good than not letting extreme views be challenged, surely ?

maybe a section for the GE, so all the threads are in one place would help

Hi there @AdamRyan ,

As usual, we'll be inviting party leaders across the board to answer questions from Mumsnetters in the run up to the election, and we'll be challenging politicians of all stripes about policy issues we know are important to users like childcare, parental leave and maternity care.

With regards to posts from individual users, the usual moderation rules apply. If someone appears to be here with a particular agenda and we can see they aren't genuine, we will ban and delete posts, otherwise feel free to challenge opinions on the thread. While not always the case, sometimes one woman's misinformation is another's difference of opinion so unless there's clear evidence that something is an untruth, we may not simply delete it and we like conversation to flow, so where possible we'd encourage people to challenge posts they feel are incorrect.

That said, if you have concerns about a particular post or poster, do hit the report button. It's usually clear from our end when someone is not genuine or simply here to cause trouble.

Thanks @HebeMumsnet

Look forward to seeing the leaders on here