The 2024 presidential election has seen an increase in disinformation in the Spanish language and content creators making a living by removing this fake content. From conspiracies about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago property in 2023 to lies about Kamala Harris being a Marxist, our research found a clear pattern: All these narratives that appeared in English were soon repurposed for Spanish speaking audience.

Our months-long investigation explores how the problem has grown amid the widespread monetization of social media platforms and the rise of technologies like AI, which enable faster and wider dissemination of content. In this episode of Futuro Investigates in collaboration with Latino USA, we hear directly from social media influencers who are pitching content in Spanish and experts who are working diligently to combat misinformation ahead of the election.

Disinformation targeting Latino communities in the United States is not a new phenomenon. In the past election, false narratives and lies flooded not only social media but also the airwaves, especially in Spanish. Targeting was paramount because research shows that more than 40 percent of Latinos consume news in that language. But what’s different this election cycle is the rise of both content creators drawn to the ever-expanding Latino market and online platforms themselves.

Twitter’s devolution to X after Elon Musk’s takeover in late 2022 has made the platform a hotbed for misinformation. The platform has also expanded its monetization initiatives to favor paying subscribers. Until early October of this year, X paid verified creators a percentage of the revenue from ads displayed in their answers. They have since moved to paying creators directly based on engagement of their content from other subscribers. This strategy makes it more likely that creators will try to generate more content that goes viral. And unfortunately, what tends to go viral often is fake news.

At the same time, tech companies still don’t moderate or remove Spanish-language content to the same extent as English. In fact, as of November 2022, Meta, YouTube, and X have all canceled policies aimed at limiting misinformation and disinformation.

Our investigation uncovers some of the persistent narratives that infiltrate Latino communities, tracing the journey of these lies and the very real impact they have on the ground. I spent months researching digital creators who share political and electoral content on social media in Spanish. In particular, we focused on two YouTubers who were heavily involved in US politics before the election.

One of them was Juan José Torres Estrada, a 24-year-old Venezuelan living in Iceland. He uses Juan Torres on his social media and runs two YouTube channels, one of which is called “Venezuela News.” However, the channel focuses almost entirely on the US election. We also caught up with John Acquaviva, another content creator who has gotten more involved in US politics in the run-up to the 2020 election. He also happens to be Venezuelan and also happens to live in outside the US

As we cross the Atlantic to discover why creators with no direct ties to the US spend so much time talking about its politics—and earn money from this work, we handle more of this web of misinformation. We look at how lies are formed here and then spread, not just across the country, but reaching Latino communities around the globe.

Illustration by Mya Pagan.