The NYT with some insight into the microtargeting capability of streaming services.
Category Archives: cheap speech
“In Fraud We Trust: How Leaders in Politics, Business, and Media Profit from Lies—and How to Stop Them”
New book from Wes Hendricksen from the University Press of Kansas, with potential relevance to election law. It includes a brief discussion of the post-2020 period.
“What We Saw on Our Platforms During 2024’s Global Elections”
A description from Meta about the state of their social media in the recent election cycle (including covert foreign influence operations Meta says it detected and quashed).
Of course, it’d be nice if there were enough transparency to allow for more independent research to confirm.
“Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online”
I’m really looking forward to reading this new paper in Science (Killian L. McLoughlin, William J. Brady, Aden Goolsbee, Ben Kaiser, Kate Klonick, and M. J. Crockett.)
With a bonus thread by Crockett on the process to get there…
“The apocalypse that wasn’t: AI was everywhere in 2024’s elections, but deepfakes and misinformation were only part of the picture”
Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders expand the frame in The Conversation.
“TikTok’s Romanian reckoning”
The Politico subhead: “Regulators suspect foul play in how far-right firebrand Călin Georgescu used the Chinese-owned app to sway voters.”
“Donald Trump’s return sends shivers through the anti-misinformation world”
The incoming Trump administration’s vow to dismantle the leftwing “censorship cartel” has thrown a shadow over the cottage industry of academics, non-profits and researchers that sprang up to combat a tide of digital misinformation — and threatens to disrupt the Big Tech companies behind the world’s most popular platforms.
Researchers fear Donald Trump will make good on his past promises to crack down further on the misinformation field in the US for alleged “election interference”. Among those threats, he has said he would seek to curb funds to any universities found to have engaged in censorship activities “such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting” for at least five years. He has signalled the seriousness of his intentions by choosing Brendan Carr as the new chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
The Republican commissioner has echoed the forthcoming president’s rhetoric on “free speech” and “dismantling censorship”. Trump’s efforts have also received public support from Silicon Valley heavyweights, including a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, now one of the president-elect’s most visible allies. …
“I’m pretty fucking scared,” said one professor in the field, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fears of retribution. “If this stuff happens, I will be on a plane [out of America].”
Another professor said the rhetoric had placed pressure on individuals but also universities and colleges at an institutional level, and that discussions were being held internally about how to prepare. “It’s an existential threat to my livelihood and [our] research funding.”…
“Nearly 40% of young Americans get their news from influencers. Many of them lean to the right, study finds”
CNN: A new PEW study of 10,658 Americans finds one-fifth of US adults ‘regularly’ receive their news from online ‘news influencers.’ But 37% of young adults aged 18 to 29 do. “A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).”
“Social media influencers differ from trained journalists in how they report facts, often weaving their own views into current events or presenting opinions as reportable facts. Where news organizations have clearly delineated sections dedicated to reporting and opinion, news influencers often produce single products such as podcasts and newsletters that fail to distinguish the types of information being presented to their audience.”
Influencers online notably lean conservative despite long-standing charges from Republicans that social media sites lean left and censor their views. TikTok somewhat bucks the gender and ideological trends.
“Liberals Are Left Out in the Cold as Social Media Veers Right”
Sheera Frenkel for the NYT:
After Donald J. Trump won the election this month, his supporters gravitated to a panoply of online destinations to celebrate.
Hundreds of thousands of posts lauding Mr. Trump’s victory filled Truth Social, the social platform that the president-elect owns. Speculation about what the new administration would accomplish ran rampant on X, which is owned by Elon Musk. Gab, Parler and other right-wing social media sites were flooded with thousands of memes glorifying Mr. Trump.
No similar spaces existed for the left. Meta’s Instagram, Threads and Facebook had publicly de-emphasized politics leading up to the election. Mr. Musk had transformed Twitter into X and shifted it to the right. And no other tech platform had gained momentum as a public square for liberals.
“It has become starkly evident that the left, the Democrats, do not have the same social media platforms to push their agenda,” said Phillip Walzak, a political consultant based in New York. “It has left Democrats in a huge deficit.”
If the election underscored anything about the internet, it was how far social media platforms had moved to the right. While Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other sites continue to be popular gathering places for entertainment and meme-making, political discourse online has increasingly shifted to an array of mostly right-wing sites that have built up their audiences and stoked largely partisan conversations.
The change was an unintended consequence of a series of decisions made by some of the biggest social platforms nearly four years ago….
New Report Find X’s Algorithms Changed in July 2024 to Boost Republican-Leaning Accounts and Elon Musk’s Account After Musk’s Trump Endorsement
The report from Timothy Graham and Mark Andrejevic (via Bluesky). Abstract:
This technical report presents findings from a two-phase analysis investigating potential algorithmic bias in engagement metrics on X (formerly Twitter) by examining Elon Musk’s account against a group of prominent users and subsequently comparing Republican-leaning versus Democrat-leaning accounts. The analysis reveals a structural engagement shift around mid-July 2024, suggesting platform-level changes that influenced engagement metrics for all accounts under examination. The date at which the structural break (spike) in engagement occurs coincides with Elon Musk’s formal endorsement of Donald Trump on 13th July 2024.
In Phase One, focused on Elon Musk’s account, the analysis identified a marked differential uplift across all engagement metrics (view counts, retweet counts, and favourite counts) following the detected change point. Musk’s account not only started with a higher baseline compared to the other accounts in the analysis but also received a significant additional boost post-change, indicating a potential algorithmic adjustment that preferentially enhanced visibility and interaction for Musk’s posts.
In Phase Two, comparing Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning accounts, we again observed an engagement shift around the same date, affecting all metrics. However, only view counts showed evidence of a group-specific boost, with Republican-leaning accounts exhibiting a significant post-change increase relative to Democrat-leaning accounts. This finding suggests a possible recommendation bias favouring Republican content in terms of visibility, potentially via recommendation mechanisms such as the “For You” feed. Conversely, retweet and favourite counts did not display the same group-specific boost, indicating a more balanced distribution of engagement across political alignments.
Overall, the results imply that while some aspects of engagement on the platform appear to have been enhanced broadly, specific visibility advantages may have been selectively applied, raising important questions about the potential impact of algorithmic adjustments on public discourse and the ‘neutrality’ of social media platforms as information carriers.
“Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency”
Since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk has gone all in on X to promote the incoming administration.
Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted on the platform about politics more than 400 times between Tuesday and Friday, celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory and talking about the causes that the president-elect should take up in office. Mr. Musk’s posts included a photo of himself and his son X Æ A-Xii Musk surrounded by Mr. Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, as well as another photo of himself with Mr. Trump that was captioned “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase that appears on the dollar bill and means “a new order for the ages.”
Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, also chimed in. In reply to a post this week about the platform’s role in driving political conversation, she wrote, “Reporting for duty.”
Their comments show how Mr. Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called on Wednesday, Mr. Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect. In addition, he has urged X’s users to replace the news media and report on Mr. Trump’s triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.
That comes on top of how Mr. Musk has used X as a battering ram for months to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Musk, who endorsed Mr. Trump in July, held a wide-ranging audio conversation with him on X in August. That same month, Mr. Trump started using his reinstated account on the platform regularly.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk held an audio town hall on the site urging his more than 203 million followers to vote for Mr. Trump. The president-elect credited Mr. Musk on Wednesday for helping secure his win. “A star is born — Elon!” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech.
Mr. Musk has “turned X into the church of the conservative movement,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. “It’s gone from that public sphere to a bullhorn.”…
“Musk to Spend Election Night With Trump; Elon Musk has spent $119 million on a super PAC supporting Donald Trump and held events on his behalf. But his ownership of X is especially valuable.”
Elon Musk plans to spend election night with former President Donald J. Trump, giving Mr. Trump direct access to the person controlling one of key information platforms on what could be a chaotic evening….
Mr. Musk is joining the evening as a Trump superfan. He has spent at least $119 million on a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump and has held events on his behalf in Pennsylvania. He and Mr. Trump talk several times a week.
But one of the biggest benefits that Mr. Musk has brought to the Trump team is his ownership of X, the website formerly known as Twitter.
Democrats fear that Mr. Musk may use his personal feed on X to promote election misinformation. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday, Mr. Musk has posted raw data on early votes to falsely suggest that Mr. Trump has an insurmountable lead in places like Pennsylvania, and he has shared his concerns about the reliability of voting machines.
“Elon Musk promotes video referencing QAnon in support of Trump”
Elon Musk shared a video in support of Donald Trump that appeared to includereferences to the extremistQAnon ideology and footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, elevating the radicalized movement on the eveningbefore millions of American voters cast their ballots on Election Day.
The billionaire owner of X has become one of Trump’s most vocal backers in the closing weeks of the campaign, and he has shared a blizzard of misinformation about the integrity of the U.S. electoral system. Musk has frequently appeared at campaign rallies alongside the Republican nominee, while giving over $118.5 million to his own pro-Trump group.
The one-minute video, a mashup of campaign footage and archival video set to audio of Donald Trump speaking, featuresthe letters “PATRIQTS” flickering on-screen and phrases used online by QAnon devotees.
QAnon is a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology that has radicalized its followers. It has incited violence and criminal acts, and the FBI has designated it a domestic terrorism threat. The movement centers on the belief that Trump is battling a secret crusade against a Satan-worshipping cabal of prominent figures controlling the U.S. government. Online, QAnon devotees previouslydissected thousands of cryptic prophesies from someone known as Q, who claimed to be a top-secret government operative but was quite possibly just an administrator of a fringe message board.
The video, which was already circulating online before Musk amplified it on the eve of Election Day, also included what appeared to be imagery from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when pro-Trump rioters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol in support of his baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
According to X’s own metrics, the video had garnered more than 23 million views by the early hours of Election Day. Since Musk took over the social media platform in 2022, he has bent the platform to his whims, making algorithmic changes that result in users seeing his tweets first even if they don’t choose to follow him. A Washington Post analysis found that right-wing tweeters are also more likely to go viral.…
“A pro-Trump influencer says a Russian agent paid him $100 to post a fake voter fraud video. It wasn’t the first time”
An American social media influencer said he was paid $100 by a pro-Kremlin propagandist to post a fake video of Haitian immigrants claiming to vote in the US presidential election. The payment was one of several the man said he received from the propagandist- a registered Russian agent – to post on social media in the run-up to the election.
The pro-Trump influencer, who uses the @AlphaFox78 handle on X, is an American man living in Massachusetts, CNN has learned. He agreed to speak to CNN about the posts on condition of anonymity.
The account, which has a history of posting right-wing memes in support of former President Donald Trump, was the first to post the now-debunked video that purportedly showed a Haitian immigrant claiming he would vote at least twice in Georgia for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Georgia Secretary of State said everything in that video was faked, from the actors to the ID cards, and was produced and disseminated by Russian influence actors.’
In phone and text interviews with CNN over multiple days, the person behind the account, which has amassed more than 650,000 followers on X, said he posted the video without fact-checking the claims made in it.
“I don’t have any idea where it came from or anything – I’m just the guy who shared it,” he said.
The man said Simeon Boikov, a Russian propagandist podcaster known online as “AussieCossack,” offered him $100 to post the video, which he agreed to. A person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to CNN that multiple payments were sent from Boikov to the Massachusetts man…..