• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, Reddit is taking measures to promote voting participation across the country and combat AI-generated election misinformation.

“The online environment has changed since the last election cycle,” Reddit's announcement states. “Spam, automated accounts, and attempts to manipulate conversations continue to evolve.”

Reddit's Safety teams are responsible for enforcing sitewide rules, while volunteer content moderators are expected to manage their on-platform communities. Users also have the capability to report concerns regarding inauthentic content.

According to Reddit's content guidelines, the platform prohibits “deliberate attempts to interfere with or undermine the integrity of civic or electoral processes,” including intentionally misleading claims about the time, place and means of voting; voter eligibility requirements; and procedures governing the electoral process.

Users are allowed to post AI-generated content on the platform, but what they post must still follow these policies.

“Any content designed to deliberately mislead people about real-world events or real individuals is strictly forbidden,” the company's statement reads.

In an effort to better detect and remove misleading AI-generated content, Reddit has updated its AI detection models -- which, according to the announcement, have reduced user exposure to spam and inauthentic content by 20%, removing almost 2 million fake upvotes per day.

Reddit's Safety teams have expanded their coverage and enforcement of violent content, including political violence, while community moderators have their own list of tools to report suspicious content and help enforce expectations (“no politics”) in their subreddits.

Unlike other social-media platforms, to run political ads on Reddit, all political advertisers must have their candidate or campaign representative first participate in an AMA with the Reddit community before placing an ad.

“Our goal with this requirement is to ensure that political ads aren't just a one-way broadcast, but an invitation to genuine conversation with the community,” Reddit’s statement explains.

Reddit doesn’t accept political ads outside the U.S. or the federal level; political ads must be human-reviewed; advertisers must be registered with the platform; and any ad containing AI-generated content requires a label.

“We are continuing our tradition of bringing neutral, non-partisan educational resources to the platform to answer questions about the voting process, from registration all the way to ballot counting,” the company's announcement states.

In addition, Reddit is relaunching its “Up The Vote” hub, designed to provide on-platform election information from “government officials and nonpartisan experts.”

The social news platform is also partnering with two organizations -- National Voter Registration Day and Vote Early Day -- to help users “of all views and persuasions” with registration and voting.

Within Reddit’s Up The Vote hub, users can find an AMA from September, in which the National Voter Registration Day team answered questions regarding voter registration updates, state deadlines, and making plans to vote.

Whereas on Oct. 24 (this year’s official Vote Early Day), users can participate in an AMA in the platform’s “Politics” subreddit regarding early voting options.