Category Archives: social media and social protests

“Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024”

July 11, 2023, 4:31 amelection subversion risk, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

CNN: Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the… Continue reading

“State Dept. cancels Facebook meetings after judge’s ‘censorship’ ruling”

July 5, 2023, 2:47 pmchicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

WaPo: One day after a Louisiana federal judge set limits on the Biden administration’s communications with tech firms, the State Department canceled its regular meeting Wednesday with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats, according to a… Continue reading

“Federal Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contacts With Social Media Sites”

July 5, 2023, 7:28 amFirst Amendment theory, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

NYT: A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic… Continue reading

“Meta won’t say if politicians can post AI-made fakes without warnings”

April 7, 2023, 1:12 pmcheap speech, chicanery, social media and social protestsJustin Levitt

It seems … suboptimal … for platforms to be building terms-of-service policy ad hoc and mid-campaign for AI images and video in a political context.

Continuing “Twitter Files” Tussle

April 6, 2023, 5:53 pmcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsJustin Levitt

General background: there’s an explainer here about the “Twitter Files” (and the controversies over the “Twitter Files”). One of the controversies is about Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Election Integrity Partnership, an academic research coalition studying misinformation related to elections.… Continue reading

My New One at Slate: “Meta is Bringing Trump Back to Facebook. It Should Keep Him on a Short Leash to Protect Our Democracy.”

January 25, 2023, 8:12 pmcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

I have written this piece for Slate. A snippet: Meta’s decision Wednesday to replatform former president Donald J. Trump on Facebook and Instagram is lamentable and ill-considered. The company’s own standards required his continued exclusion from the social media platform… Continue reading

“Former top Twitter official forced to leave home due to threats amid ‘Twitter Files’ release”

December 12, 2022, 5:20 pmchicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

CNN: Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday. Yoel Roth, who… Continue reading

Read the Position Papers for Friday’s Stanford/UCLA Conference, “Should Donald Trump Be Returned to Social Media?”

October 12, 2022, 7:45 amcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

Very diverse group of papers from a set of very smart people for this Friday’s conference (not too late to register for the virtual webinar): Chinmayi Arun Guy Charles Evelyn Douek Katie Fallow Katie Harbath Rick Hasen David … Continue reading

“Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington”

July 6, 2022, 3:24 pmcheap speech, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

NYT: The memo that reached the top of the Department of Homeland Security in September could not have been clearer about its plan to create a board to monitor national security threats caused by the spread of dangerous disinformation.The… Continue reading

Breaking and Analysis: Supreme Court on 5-4 Vote Reinstates District Court Order Temporarily Barring Enforcement of Texas Social Media Law; Good News for the First Amendment and Bad News for Those Seeking Law to Replatform Trump

May 31, 2022, 2:26 pmcheap speech, First Amendment theory, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

In an unusual 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has vacated a so-far-unexplained order from the 5th Circuit that stayed enforcement of a Texas district court order barring Texas from enforcing its new social media law. Among other things, this Texas… Continue reading

My New Washington Post Piece Connected to My Cheap Speech Book: “Facebook and Twitter could let Trump back online. But he’s still a danger.”

March 9, 2022, 6:42 amcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

I have written this piece for the Washington Post. It begins: In the Menlo Park, Calif., offices of Meta, discussions probably have already begun to consider what will happen Jan. 7, 2023, when former president Donald Trump’s ban from Facebook… Continue reading

“Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: a literature review”

January 19, 2022, 8:04 amcheap speech, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

New Reuters Institute report: Terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are widely used in public and political debate but not in ways that are always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers,… Continue reading

Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder Issues Its Final Report

November 15, 2021, 2:10 pmchicanery, political polarization, social media and social protestsTabatha Abu El-Haj

The Commission was created to explore the implications of our “crisis of trust and truth.” A chain reaction of harm to our democracy has emerged as “bad information has become as prevalent, persuasive, and persistent as good information.” The Final … Continue reading

“Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead.”

September 15, 2021, 11:44 amcheap speech, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

WSJ: In the fall of 2018, Jonah Peretti, chief executive of online publisher BuzzFeed, emailed a top official at Facebook Inc. The most divisive content that publishers produced was going viral on the platform, he said, creating an incentive to… Continue reading

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Election Law Blogger

Rick Hasen

Professor of Law and Political Science
UCLA School of Law
Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project

Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Professor of Law, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
@tabathaabuelhaj
View posts ›

Sam Bagenstos

Frank G. Millard Professor of Law, University of Michigan (on leave)
View posts ›

Bruce E. Cain

Professor of Political Science, Stanford University
View posts ›

Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Edward B. Foley

Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University
View posts ›

Heather K. Gerken

Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
View posts ›

Abbe Gluck

Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at Yale Law School (on leave)
View posts ›

Anita Krishnakumar

Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
View posts ›

Justin Levitt

Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
View posts ›

Derek T. Muller

Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
View posts ›

Spencer A. Overton

Professor of Law,
The George Washington University Law School
View posts ›

Nate Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
View posts ›

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law
View posts ›

Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Dan Tokaji

Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
View posts ›

Franita Tolson

Interim Dean and George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law at USC Gould School of Law
View posts ›

Recent Books by Rick Hasen

A Real Right to Vote

A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy
Now available from Princeton University Press!
Read the Kirkus Review
NEW! Book tour information
Watch book discussion on Morning Joe
Order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop

Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics–and How to Cure It

Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics--and How to Cure It (Yale University Press, 2022)
Cheap Speech book website

Named one of the best books on disinformation by the New York Times

Election Law–Cases and Materials

Election Law–Cases and Materials (7th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2022) (with Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Daniel P. Tokaji, and Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos)

2023 Casebook Supplement (Free)

Election Meltdown

Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy
(Yale University Press, 2020)

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer, 2020)

Recent ELB Podcast Episodes

The ELB Podcast

Season 5, Episode 6 A Real Right to Vote (Rick Hasen & Erwin Chemerinsky)

Season 5, Episode 5 Trump, The Supreme Court, and the Shadow Docket (Steve Vladeck)

Season 5, Episode 4 Protecting Democracy in 2024...and 2025 (Ian Bassin & Jess Marsden

Season 5, Episode 3 The Trump Prosecutions, the First Amendment, and Election Interference (Genevieve Lakier and Eugene Volokh)

Season 5, Episode 2 The Roberts Court and American Democracy (Joan Biskupic)

Season 5, Episode 1 The Trump Indictments, the 2024 Elections, and Public Peace

Season 4, Episode 10 U.S. Democracy and the Independent State Legislature Theory after Moore v. Harper

More podcast episodes ›

Recent Op-Eds & Commentaries by Rick Hasen

Terrifying Reports About Trump’s Plans for a Second Term Have One Bright Spot, Slate, November 7, 2023

The Supreme Court Needs to Make a Call on Trump’s Eligibility, The Atlantic, September 26, 2023

The Biggest Difference Between the Georgia Indictment and the Jan. 6 Indictment, Slate, August 15, 2023

Why Georgia Might Beat the Feds at Holding Trump Accountable, Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2023

U.S. v. Trump Will Be the Most Important Case in Our Nation’s History, Slate, August 1, 2023

John Roberts’ Big Complaint About Elena Kagan is Deeply Ironic, Slate, July 5, 2023

There’s a Time Bomb in Progressives’ Big Supreme Court Voting Case Win, Slate, June 27, 2023

There Are Still Two Major Legal Threats to the Voting Rights Act, Slate, June 12, 2023

John Roberts Throws a Curveball, New York Times, June 8, 2023

There’s Unsettling New Evidence About William Rehnquist’s Views on Segregation, Slate, June 1 2023 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

The Urgent Warning That Got Cut from a Supreme Court Opinion 20 Years Ago, Slate, May 30, 2023

What the Court’s Would Do If the Succession Fire Played Out in Real Life, Slate, May 15, 2023

Why It’s Fine that Fox and Dominion Settled, Slate, April 19, 2023

The Effort to Suppress the Vote is Spreading to the Republican Mainstream, Slate, April 11, 2023 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

Donald Trump Probably Should Not Have Been Charged with (This) Felony, Slate, April 4, 2023

Unfortunately, the Biggest Election Case of the Supreme Court Term Could Soon Be Moot, Slate, February 6, 2023

Meta is Bringing Trump Back to Facebook. It Should Keep Him on a Short Leash to Protect Democracy, Slate, January 25, 2023

I’ve Been Way More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now, Slate, November 14, 2022

The Courts are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion, The Atlantic, November 2, 2022

An Arizona Court Seems to Think Voter Intimidation Isn’t Voter Intimidation, NBC News Think, November 1, 2022

The Supreme Court is Headed for a Self-Imposed Voting Caseload Disaster, Slate, October 26, 2022 (with Nat Bach)

The Truly Scary Part About the 1.6 Billion Conservative Donation, Slate, August 23, 2022 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

What the Critics Get Incredibly Wrong About the Collins-Manchin Election Bill, Slate, July 25, 2022

It’s Hard to Overstate the Danger of the Voting Case the Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear, Slate, June 30, 2022

No One is Above the Law, and that Starts with Donald Trump, N.Y. Times, June 24, 2022

The Jan. 6 Committee Should Be Looking Ahead to Election Threats in 2024, Wash. Post, June 8, 2022

The One Group That Can Stop Elon Musk from Unbanning Trump on Twitter, Slate, May 10, 2022

Facebook and Twitter Could Let Trump Back Online. But He’s Still a Danger, Washington Post, Mar. 9, 2022

How Supreme Court Radicalism Could Threaten Democracy Itself, Slate, Mar. 8, 2022

How to Keep the Rising Tide of Fake News from Drowning Our Democracy, N.Y. Times, Mar. 7, 2022

North Carolina Republicans Ask SCOTUS To Decimate Voting Rights in Every State, Slate, Feb. 25, 2022

What Democrats Need From Mitch McConnell to Make an Election Reform Deal Worth It, Slate, Jan. 4, 2022

No One is Coming to Save Us from the ‘Dagger at the Throat of America,’ N.Y. Times, Jan. 7, 2022

More op-eds and commentaries by Rick ›

Recent Academic Articles and Working Papers by Rick Hasen

Nonprofit Law as a Tool to Kill What Remains of Campaign Finance Law: Reluctant Lessons from Ellen Aprill, 46 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (forthcoming 2023) (festschrift symposium honoring Ellen Aprill), draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4353037

Election Reform: Past, Present, and Future in Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (Eugene Mazo, ed., forthcoming 2023), draft available: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4218256

Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States, 135 Harvard Law Review Forum 265 (2022)

Research Note: Record Election Litigation Rates in the 2020 Election: An Aberration or a Sign of Things to Come?, Election Law Journal, https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/epdf/10.1089/elj.2021.0050 (2022)

Optimism and Despair About a 2020 “Election Meltdown” and Beyond, 100 Boston University Law Review Online 298 (2020) (part of symposium on my book, Election Meltdown)

Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, and How to Treat and Cure Them, Election Law Journal (2020)

More academic articles by Rick Hasen ›

Recent Books by ELB Contributors

Gerkin – The Democracy Index

The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It
by Heather K. Gerken

Persily – Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy
(Cambridge Press, 2020)
by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker

Pildes – The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, 6th ed.
(Foundation Press, 2022)
by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes, Nathaniel Persily, and Franita Tolson

Tokaji – Election Law in a Nutshell

Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed., West Academic Publishing, 2017)
by Daniel P. Tokaji

Podcasts by ELB Contributors

Tolson – Free and Fair Podcast

Free & Fair with Franita and Foley
Franita Tolson and Edward Foley

Recent Articles by ELB Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 1225 (2018).

Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu & Emily R. Zhang, A Reasonable Bias Approach to Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation to Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1521 (2018).

Edward B. Foley, Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism (May 10, 2021). Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 61

Anita S. Krishnakumar, Cracking the Whole Code Rule (February 19, 2020). St. John’s Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-0002, New York University Law Review, Forthcoming

Justin Levitt, Failed Elections and the Legislative Selection of Electors, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1052 (2021)

Derek T. Muller, Election Subversion and the Writ of Mandamus, William & Mary Law Review (forthcoming)

Spencer Overton, Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression. GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-23, GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 2020-23, 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1793 (2020)

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, The Sweep of the Electoral Power (October 20, 2020). Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-07