The U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) joined the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition, a coalition of Latino organizations in the U.S., in his calls for social media platforms to take effective action to counter conspiratorial theories and political misinformation directed at Spanish-speaking communities.  The groups expressed their displeasure by saying that social media companies are not doing enough to contain the spread of Fake News specifically targeting Latinos.

According to the Texas Tribune, the coalition “says that Spanish speakers are particularly vulnerable because of their heavy use of platforms such as YouTube and WhatsApp, where disinformation on voting has spread in the leadup to the 2022 midterm elections. They cite an ongoing flood of conspiracies and extremist rhetoric that has already prompted violence in Texas and elsewhere”.

We previously reported that, according to a survey conducted by the Nielsen group, the Latino community in the country, compared to the general population, shows a greater tendency to consume and share fake news and information online.

Meta, Facebook and WhatsApp’s parent company, and Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, could not be immediately reached by the editors of the Texas Tribune until October 13.

On October 10, the watchdog group Media Mattersfor America published information of the discovery that many Videos in Spanish with false information continue to spread on YouTube, despite the platform’s promises to improve monitoring before the midterm elections next month. Researchers say misinformation has been targeted and particularly prominent among Latino communities.

“Latinos are affected by a different misinformation environment that reaches the U.S. population at large, and are often targeted in specific ways to their national backgrounds,” University of Houston researchers wrote earlier this year. “For instance, many of their sources played up worries about socialism (often using the term ‘government handouts’), encouraged racial resentment pitting African Americans against Latinos, or preyed on distrust of authority in the Latino community”, according to the Texas Tribune publication.

The coalition’s calls come as Texas lawmakers continue to push back against moderation on social media platforms. “Last year, the state legislature passed a law that banned major tech companies from removing users over a ‘viewpoint’. The law, which is currently being fought in court, also requires platforms to make public reports on content or accounts they remove,” according to the same publication.

The law was part of a broader backlash from conservatives against major tech companies over perceived bias — claims that were exacerbated by Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump and 70,000 accounts that helped spread dangerous misinformation ahead of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.