US Election Platform Preparedness: Comparative Analysis

Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, ISD-US assessed the readiness of major social media platforms — including X, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube — across six areas: platform integrity, violent extremism and hate speech, internal and external resourcing, transparency, political advertising, and handling of state-affiliated media.

The comparative analysis found divergent approaches across platforms in how they addressed election-related risks, but identified a consistent throughline: a pervasive lack of transparency regarding policy details, the scope of safety interventions, and the resources allocated to election-integrity work. This limited disclosure made it difficult for outside researchers to verify how platforms were actually enforcing their stated policies, particularly around hate speech and violent threats, which the authors describe as elevated in an increasingly polarized and obscured information environment.

The report concludes that inconsistent policy frameworks and insufficient public disclosure across the platforms undermine external accountability, leaving significant uncertainty about how well-prepared major platforms actually were to manage election-related harms in practice.