NYU: Transparency in political ads is vital to ensuring safe and fair elections, but transparency is difficult if advertisers are not required to disclose details about targeting and sources of funding. While TV broadcasters must disclose information about political ads … Continue reading
Category Archives: cheap speech
Washington Post: One tweet claimed coronavirus numbers were intentionally inflated, adding, “It’s hard to know what to believe.” Another warned, “Don’t trust Dr. Fauci.”A Facebook comment argued that mail-in ballots “will lead to fraud for this election,” while an Instagram comment amplified the erroneous claim that … Continue reading
Tech Crunch: A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found.The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family … Continue reading
Politico: George Soros directs a “deep state” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida … Continue reading
So troubling: Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and … Continue reading
A wow story in the New Yorker: On its face, Phunware seems like a strange choice to develop the campaign’s app. Before working for President Trump, Phunware’s software was being used in relatively few applications, the most popular being a … Continue reading
Eugene Volokh blogs. … Continue reading
WaPo: For President Trump and his allies, it was a week spent spreading doctored and misleading videos.On Aug. 30, the president retweeted footage of a Black man violently pushing a White woman on a subway platform under the caption, “Black Lives Matter/Antifa” — … Continue reading
WaPo: Russia is seeking “to undermine public trust in the electoral process” by spreading false claims that mail-in-ballots are riddled with fraud and susceptible to manipulation, according to a new intelligence bulletin by the Department of Homeland Security.Many of the … Continue reading
HuffPost:President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a series of Facebook ads on Thursday featuring a manipulated photo of his presidential opponent Joe Biden edited to make the former vice president appear older.The ads, which label Biden “Sleepy Joe,” show him gazing … Continue reading
CNN: In an attempt to combat efforts to undermine the US presidential election in November, Facebook on Thursday took several steps it says will address concerns about election interference on its platform.But Facebook will continue to allow politicians to run lies in ads through … Continue reading
ABC News: In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails … Continue reading
New Brennan Center report. … Continue reading
NBC News: Peace Data aimed to court left-leaning voters, said Ben Nimmo, whose company, Graphika, released a report on the site.“This looks like an attempt to target left-wing audiences on a range of issues, but the operation got taken down … Continue reading
Cap Radio reports. … Continue reading
CNN: A series of deceptively edited and misleading videos shared by prominent Republicans have run up millions of views across Facebook and Twitter in just the past few days. And while both companies have pledged to combat misinformation, their responses … Continue reading
CNN: People associated with the infamous St. Petersburg troll group that was part of Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election are trying to target Americans again, Facebook (FB) announced Tuesday after receiving a tip from the FBI.The disrupted operation … Continue reading
Politico: Twitter said Monday it will begin displaying warning labels on shared posts that contain misleading or doctored videos after facing complaints that it failed to do enough to limit the spread of deceptive clips targeting Joe Biden’s campaign.Key context: The … Continue reading
As part of my own book project, I read the edited volume “Social Media and Democracy” the day it came out. This is a must-read for researchers who care about the extent to which social media has changed and may … Continue reading
WaPo: Google has declined to remove ads from a shadowy group echoing President Trump’s misleading claim that there is a meaningful difference between voting by mail and absentee voting.Google took five days to reach its decision to leave the ads in … Continue reading
Kevin Roose for the NYT: Listen, liberals. If you don’t think Donald Trump can get re-elected in November, you need to spend more time on Facebook.Since the 2016 election, I’ve been obsessively tracking how partisan political content is performing on … Continue reading
NBC News: Twitter has taken action to stop a spam operation that pushed messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party.The company removed two fake accounts and deleted the account of a San Diego man who spammed … Continue reading
WaPo: Four years after Russian operatives used social media in a bid to exacerbate racial divisions in the United States and suppress Black voter turnout, such tactics have spread across a wide range of deceptive online campaigns operated from numerous nations — … Continue reading
Can’t wait to dig into this volume edited by Nate Persily and Joshua Tucker, with free access from Cambridge. Thanks Cambridge! … Continue reading
Times of Israel: On August 18, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the fifth volume of its Russia investigation, which examines Russia’s attempts to meddle in US politics during the 2016 elections. An entire section of the report is devoted to the … Continue reading
Tweet. Screenshot with warning: … Continue reading
WaPo: Facebook on Friday deleted a page using an image of LeBron James, among other deceptive tactics, to spread false and misleading claims about mail-in voting, a day after The Washington Post raised questions about the online operation.A Facebook spokeswoman, Devon … Continue reading
NYT: Facebook spent years preparing to ward off any tampering on its site ahead of November’s presidential election. Now the social network is getting ready in case President Trump interferes once the vote is over.Employees at the Silicon Valley company are laying … Continue reading
WaPo: A prominent Washington-based conservative advocacy organization is promoting a deceptive digital ad campaign that is stoking fears about mail-in voting and targeting battleground states with high concentrations of minority voters.FreedomWorks, the tax-exempt nonprofit that helped launchtea-partyprotests a decade ago … Continue reading
Politifact reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: A network of fake Chinese accounts has been posting videos bashing President Trump, criticizing his recent closure of China’s consulate in Houston, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his threats to ban the popular social media app TikTok, … Continue reading
Ben Smith NYT column: But the referees who really matter nowadays are no longer the big media companies. The new referees are the Silicon Valley giants that control what we see when we search, browse or post online. But some … Continue reading
Donie O’Sullivan for CNN: Late Wednesday, Twitter made waves by temporarily restricting a Trump campaign account’s ability to tweet because it shared a video containing false claims President Trump had made about the coronavirus. But Twitter took no action on President Trump’s … Continue reading
WaPo: The Pinocchio Test Two of these photos fall under the category of “doctored” in the Fact Checker’s Guide to Manipulated Video. In the most egregious case, one image literally takes Biden from a nature preserve and puts him in a … Continue reading
Buzzfeed has posted this report, with the subhead: “Facebook employees collected evidence showing the company is giving right-wing pages preferential treatment when it comes to misinformation. And they’re worried about how the company will handle the president’s falsehoods in an … Continue reading
NBC News: Facebook removed hundreds of accounts on Thursday from a foreign troll farm posing as African-Americans in support of Donald Trump and QAnon supporters. It also removed thousands of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times … Continue reading
NYT: Russia continues to use a network of proxy websites to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda in the United States and other parts of the West, according to a State Department report released on Wednesday.The report is one of the most detailed … Continue reading
Buzzfeed: For at least the last two months, a key Instagram feature, which algorithmically pushes users toward supposedly related content, has been treating hashtags associated with President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in very different ways. … Continue reading
WaPo: Fact checkers were unanimous in their assessments when President Trump began claiming in June that Democrat Joe Biden wanted to “defund” police forces. Politifact called the allegations “false,” as did CheckYourFact. The Associated Press detailed “distortions” in Trump’s claims. FactCheck.org called an ad airing them “deceptive.” Another site, The Dispatch, said there … Continue reading
ProPublica: On April 3, Terrence K. Williams, a politically conservative actor and comedian who’s been praised by President Donald Trump, assured his nearly 3 million followers on Facebook that Democrats would light ballots on fire or throw them away. Wearing a red … Continue reading
Politico: Videos peddling false claims about voter fraud and Covid-19 cures draw millions of views on YouTube. Partisan activist groups pretending to be online news sites set up shop on Facebook. Foreign trolls masquerade as U.S. activists on Instagram to … Continue reading