Friend, since Free Press Action released research on daily Spanish speakers’ attitudes about media and technology earlier this summer,¹ we’ve been sounding the alarm about our most significant finding:

Daily Spanish speakers in the United States are more likely to experience the negative impacts of online misinformation — affirming years of research that finds Latinos are ripe targets for malicious actors.

Disinformation and misinformation are becoming more personalized and individualized thanks to mass quantities of data that Big Tech and data brokers collect about us. Generative AI has made all of this even more dangerous. And with job losses and newsroom closures that have hit ethnic media especially hard, hate and lies are simply going unchecked.

The fight to ensure that English and non-English speakers alike are protected from misinformation — and have access to trustworthy content — has never been more urgent. Will you make your very first donation to Free Press Action’s Democracy Watch Fund? We’re short of our monthly target, so your first gift could be the one that puts us over the top:

Our research sheds light on the unique information environments of dominant Spanish speakers: They are spending more time on social-media platforms and more time searching for culturally relevant news — but are finding less information that meets their needs.

There’s no one remedy for this crisis. But we’re pushing forward on all fronts — through advocacy, research and webinars — for the solutions we need. We're:

• Pressing social-media platforms to moderate content across ALL languages, and to hold VIP accounts — those belonging to political figures, celebrities and other powerful figures — to the same standards as everyone else’s
• Urging journalists to educate the public about the prevalence of online manipulation, and to underscore how social-media platforms are doing less to address this problem in non-English languages
• Calling on people to slow down in moments of crisis and get the facts right
• Urging Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation to curb the rampant collection and retention of our personal data, which malicious actors use to target us
• Calling on lawmakers to address the decline of local journalism by investing public dollars into local, independent, nonprofit and ethnic media

1. "National Poll Finds Spanish Speakers Concerned About the Spread of Misinformation and Their Readiness to Prepare for and Participate in Elections," Free Press Action, July 25, 2024