A survey of US adults on misinformation: 91% say its spread is a problem, 77% think it increases hate crimes, and 73% say it increases extreme political views
David Klepper / Associated Press : Tweets: @alexmahadevan Tweets: Alex Mahadevan / @alexmahadevan : Misinformation leads to violence. This has been proven time and time again. https://apnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This AP survey lands in a five-year run of polling that keeps finding the same thing with rising intensity: a Pew survey of 24,525 people across 19 countries already rated misinformation a major threat on par with climate change just weeks earlier, and US adults have been shifting toward wanting intervention since at least 2018, when the Gallup-Knight survey found 85% thought tech platforms weren't doing enough against fake news.
What the new numbers add is specificity about perceived harm — not just that misinformation spreads, but that most Americans now tie it directly to hate crimes and political extremism. That framing matters because it feeds the policy pressure visible in [[a:969803|Pew's tracking showing support for government restriction of false information climbing from 39% to 48% between 2018 and 2021]].
First-order effects
- Platforms face renewed public-pressure risk: the AP findings attribute concrete harms (hate crimes, extreme views) to misinformation, sharpening the critique behind earlier audits like the COVID content study where 59% of rated-false posts stayed up unlabeled on Twitter.
- Policymakers get fresh public-opinion cover for intervention proposals, building on the growing minority of Americans who already say government should restrict false info online.
Second-order effects
- Tech platforms' trust-and-safety teams will likely be pushed toward more aggressive labeling and removal as the harm narrative hardens, reversing the drift toward lighter moderation many platforms adopted after 2020-2021.
- Election-adjacent actors take note: with a later Axios survey finding 53% of US adults expect AI misinformation to influence the 2024 election outcome, platforms and campaigns face compounding expectations around synthetic-content disclosure.
Third-order effects
- If public perception of misinformation as a violence driver holds across surveys, the structural trajectory points toward codified regulation of online content in the US rather than voluntary platform policy — a shift from platform discretion to external accountability.
- The consensus numbers also suggest misinformation becomes a standard variable in how institutions measure social harm, sitting alongside crime and economic indicators in public discourse.
The trend: Public opinion on misinformation is consolidating from vague concern into attributed physical and political harm, steadily building the case for regulatory rather than self-policed content moderation.