Roughly half of registered voters polled, including most Republican and Democrats, support totally shutting down social media services during the week of the U.S. presidential election, a report said Friday.
Fifty-two percent of 1,000 voters surveyed by this month said they support pulling the plug on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter the week of the election, Axios reported. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Respondents who voiced support for shutting down social media services during the span include 54% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans surveyed, Axios reported.
Sixty-two percent said they are not confident social media companies can prevent election-related misinformation, and 91% believe they should do more to prevent it from proliferating, the report said.
The poll was commissioned by Accountable Tech, an advocacy group focused on fighting the spread of online misinformation, and conducted by data analytics firm GQR, according to Axios.
“There’s a pretty staggering level of concern for how ill-prepared social media platforms are for this election. I mean, a majority of voters effectively said, ‘Screw it, shut it all down.’ That’s not to say we should do that, but it sends a clear message to Silicon Valley that they need to step up,” Accountable Tech founder Jesse Lehrich told Axios, the news site reported.
Accountable Tech did not immediately respond to a message inquiring further about the polling data.
Other recent polling has indicated a majority of Americans believe social media companies should reconsider their policies with respect to political content, however.
More than half of 10,000 people surveyed recently as part of a separate poll said that social media companies should outright ban political advertisements, the Pew Research Center reported Thursday.
Twitter banned political ads last year. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company will reject political ads in the week before Election Day.
