How Musk and Zuckerberg cooked our elections | If You're Listening

To scroll through social media during an election campaign in 2025 is to experience some of the worst misinformation. But an online soup of bots spouting partisan talking points wasn’t inevitable, even in recent years. After the 2016 election of US President Donald Trump and UK vote for Brexit, it was clear that online platforms like Facebook and Twitter were used to target voters with misinformation and disrupt political discourse enough to sway elections. As a result, the social media giants really tried to crack down on harmful content spreading online…or at least they pretended to. But in the last year or so, they’ve almost completely given up… and the vast digital sea of misinformation has become more dangerous than ever. Subscribe: https://ab.co/3yqPOZ5 Welcome to ABC News In-depth, where you'll find our long-form journalism and other videos to help you understand what's going on in the world around you. Watch more ABC News content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1 For more from ABC News, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY Get breaking news and livestreams from our ABC News channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/NewsOnABC Like ABC News on Facebook: http://facebook.com/abcnews.au Follow ABC News on Instagram: http://instagram.com/abcnews_au Follow ABC News on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abcnews Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNewsIndepth #ABCNewsAustralia