I am heartbroken for the victims of today’s domestic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh which has left 11 people dead. These people were praying and celebrating a recent birth with a bris. The killer apparently … Continue reading
Category Archives: social media and social protests
CNET: On Oct. 7, during the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, Facebookemployees noticed something suspicious on the social network. A story posted to Facebook incorrectly claimed the election was delayed because of protests. The company’s data scientists and operations team … Continue reading
Sheera Frenkel for the NYT: What Right Wing News did was part of a shift in the flow of online disinformation, falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame. In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter … Continue reading
Release: Today, Facebook is announcing a new initiative to help provide independent, credible research about the role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally. It will be funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Democracy … Continue reading
Fascinating NYT report. … Continue reading
Lili Levi has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, First Amendment Law Review). Here is the abstract: “Fake news” has become the central inflammatory charge in media discourse in the United States since the 2016 presidential contest. In the political realm, … Continue reading
Ken Doyle for Bloomberg BNA: Political ads on Facebook would have to carry disclaimers stating who paid for each ad, under a new draft advisory opinion set to be considered by the Federal Election Commission. Disclaimer requirements for online political ads have … Continue reading
Tony Gaughan has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal). Here is the abstract: Since the 1970s, federal campaign finance law has been built on four pillars. The first is contribution limits on donations to candidate … Continue reading
CNN: A Twitter account misleading Democratic voters in Virginia by telling them they could cast their ballot by text message was active for almost three hours on Tuesday morning before Twitter suspended the account. The account, “MAGA Mike King,” was … Continue reading
CBC News reports. … Continue reading
Politico: Top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump’s victory. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary … Continue reading
CNN: Facebook will inform lawmakers this week that roughly 126 million Americans may have been exposed to content generated on its platform by the Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency between June 2015 and August 2017, … Continue reading
NYT: Twitter said on Tuesday that it would bring more transparency to advertisements on its site, including political ads, in the latest response by a technology company to criticism about its role in spreading foreign propaganda during the 2016 presidential … Continue reading
Texas Public Radio: The fantasy of Texas national independence has been stoked for decades but in recent years it has found an ally with Russia. An investigation into a popular pro-Texas secession Facebook page found that it was run by Russians. … Continue reading
Brendan Nyhan and Yusaku Horiuchi for the Monkey Cage: One promising approach is summary fact-checking — an increasingly popular format that presents an overview of fact-checking ratings for a politician. This is distinct from focusing on whether a single statement is true or false; rather, … Continue reading
Brendan Nyhan for NYT’s The UpShot: Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Facebook has taken a number of actions to prevent the continued distribution of false news articles on its platform, most notably by labeling articles rated as false or misleading … Continue reading
NYT: Senator John McCain and two Democratic senators moved on Thursday to force Facebook, Google and other internet companies to disclose who is purchasing online political advertising, after revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the … Continue reading
Sobering stuff. … Continue reading
Chapinblog. … Continue reading
Daily Beast: The co-authors of McCain-Feingold’s House companion bill, Reps. Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), were not pleased. They sued the FEC in part due to that omission, and successfully invalidated 15 FEC regulations. In response, the commission … Continue reading
Weigel: Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for Senate in Alabama, gained then lost thousands of apparently fake Twitter followers in the space of a few hours — a situation that his campaign blamed on Democrats. “We highly doubt that reporters … Continue reading
WaPo: Democratic lawmakers are pushing for new legislation that would require greater disclosure of political ads that run on Internet platforms, despite a pledge by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that the company will voluntarily pull back the curtain on political advertising … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned. The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens … Continue reading
New syndicated George Will column: Volokh anticipated today’s a la carte world of instant, inexpensive electronic distributions of only such content as pleases particular individuals. In 1995, he said that “letting a user configure his own mix of materials” can … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The personal Facebook page of Vice President Mike Pence is also running a version of the ad. One difference between the Pence and Trump ads is the VP’s refers to “Fake News media,” while Trump’s calls out the “mainstream … Continue reading
Chris Elmendorf and Abby Wood have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: It is common to think of political elites—candidates, legislators, party officials, and campaign advisers—as specialists in learning the preferences of voters. But recent studies find … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
CNN: How extensive was Russia’s use of Facebook to meddle with the presidential election? Even Facebook doesn’t know. One week after it told the country that it had sold $100,000 worth of ads to a Russian troll farm during the … Continue reading
Today’s must-read from Ben Smith. … Continue reading
I have written this oped for Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Opinion section. It begins: The Internet and social media did not create white supremacist movements in the United States, such as the hate groups that rallied in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend … Continue reading
Pacific Standard interviewed me about my new “cheap speech” paper. … Continue reading
I have written this draft for SSRN (forthcoming, in the First Amendment Law Review’s symposium on “Distorting the News: ‘Fake News’ and Free Speech“). Here is the abstract: In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995 Yale Law Journal symposium … Continue reading
NYT: Imagine you’re a millionaire or billionaire with strong political views and a desire to spread those views to the masses. Do you start a think tank in Washington? Funnel millions to a shadowy “super PAC”? Bankroll the campaign of … Continue reading
David Ingram for Reuters: The laws that prohibit foreign nationals from spending money to influence U.S. elections do not prevent them from lawfully buying some kinds of political ads on Facebook and other online networks, campaign finance lawyers said. The … Continue reading
Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Charlotte Goodman fascinating NYT oped: With the help of two software engineers, Erika Pheby and Kyle Buttner, we designed a chatbot, a smart computer program that deployed an adaptable script. In the two days ahead of … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Politico: With Georgia’s special House election going down to the wire, it’s no shock that Twitter is saturated with Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel. But what is surprising is just how much of the traffic traces to a … Continue reading
Jim Rutenberg NYT column: Of course, Watergate unfolded in a much simpler time in the media industry. There were three major news networks and PBS; a major paper or three in every city; and a political dynamic in which leaders … Continue reading
Jeremy Peters for the NYT: But as the journey of that one tweet shows, misinformed, distorted and false stories are gaining traction far beyond the fringes of the internet. Just 14 words from Mr. Posobiec’s Twitter account would spread far … Continue reading
Charlie Savage reports for the NY Times. I’ve been debating this issue with others on my Twitter account. … Continue reading
Really disturbing from Paste Magazine: Now let’s see exactly what’s up here. Together, we’re going to Google the phrase “trump no evidence collusion.” (And because Google searches change over time, I’ll drop screenshots of my results here.) What will emerge is … Continue reading
Charlie Warzel for BuzzFeed: Twitter is certainly clogged with bots — a number of which are designed to elegantly spread information that’s far from credible and push narratives. Scholars at Oxford suggest bots accounted for 18 percent of Twitter’s traffic … Continue reading
Farhad Manjoo in the NYT: Specifically, Twitter often acts as the small bowel of digital news. It’s where political messaging and disinformation get digested, packaged and widely picked up for mass distribution to cable, Facebook and the rest of the … Continue reading
Ken Vogel for Politico: Weintraub’s interest was piqued by an article published last week by TIME magazine that revealed intelligence officials had evidence that Russian agents bought Facebook ads to disseminate election-themed stories. It also indicated that congressional investigators were … Continue reading
Phillip Howard and Robert Gorwa WaPo oped (that I missed last week): This month, one of the most important intelligence documents about Russian interference in the U.S. election emerged. But it didn’t come from the National Security Agency or the … Continue reading
Zoe Tillman for BuzzFeed: Five people who disrupted proceedings at the US Supreme Court to protest the Citizens United decision pleaded guilty on Thursday to two misdemeanor charges, one month after losing a constitutional challenge to part of the case. … Continue reading
Important but depressing. … Continue reading
Dan Balz for WaPo: In more innocent times, the rise of the Internet was seen by many people as a boon to democracy. Disruptive, yes, but the Web broadened the flow of information, introduced new voices into the political debates, … Continue reading
Nate Persily has written this article for the Journal of Democracy. Here is the abstract: The 2016 presidential election represents the latest chapter in the disintegration of the legacy institutions that had set bounds for U.S. politics in the postwar … Continue reading
Some on the right have claimed that the complaint filed by Twitter (via Seth Waxman) seeking to block the Trump administration from forcing Twitter to reveal the identity of a Twitter user critical of the government (and perhaps working for … Continue reading