Alert: the midterm elections are two weeks away—that means that if you haven’t yet, now is the time to find out more about the candidates and issues on your ballot.
But when it comes to doing research or trying to gauge your feelings about certain initiatives or people, it can be hard to know which information to trust on the web. We’re living in an age of disinformation, trolls and bots, so what can you rely on, and what can’t you?
It’s an ongoing problem that isn’t easy to solve. But luckily, our partners at Firefox have a few tools to protect you from being targeted by bad actors who are financing social media campaigns meant to mislead you from making an informed choice.
In particular, Firefox is featuring two tools to offer you more transparency and control on Facebook: ProPublica’s Political Ad Collector and the Facebook Container.
The ProPublica tool collects the ads you’re seeing on Facebook and sends them to ProPublica’s public database for researchers, journalists and digital citizens to help increase transparency and accountability around political advertising. It also shows you the full range of political advertising that you’d otherwise not see. This is key because Facebook’s own ad-viewing system provides no easy way to browse the latest ads, and people see only their own News Feeds.
The Facebook Container extension for Firefox isolates your identity into a separate container tab, making it harder for Facebook to track you as you go about your business on the web.
In addition to these Firefox election tools, here are other resources to consider:
- Check your registration status: Firefox and Vote.org are making it easy for you to see if you’re ready for November.
- Pocket’s Midterm Feed: Fact-based reporting and analysis now through November from trustworthy sources, curated by Pocket.
- IRL: This podcast episode helps people deal with the swirl of online disinformation that is impacting elections. It features New York Times best-selling author Baratunde Thurston and the newspaper’s Scott Shane.
- Misinformation Nation: Watch this original documentary short film, Misinfo Nation: Misinformation, Democracy, and the Internet. Because while it may seem like we’re living in a world divided, the truth is out there.
Good luck out there. Don’t forget to vote on Election Day—and bring a friend or two with you!
This post is sponsored by Mozilla.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Jessica Alter (Founder, Tech for Campaigns. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
