The Trump administration has sharply expanded its campaign against experts who track misinformation and other harmful content online, abruptly canceling scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country.
The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media.
Officials at the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation contend that the research has resulted in the censorship of conservative Americans online, though there is no evidence any of the studies resulted in that.
The campaign stems from an executive order that President Trump issued on Jan. 20 vowing to protect the First Amendment right to free speech, but the scale of it has prompted criticism that it is targeting anyone researching misinformation. The intent, the critics have said, is in fact to stifle findings about the noxious content that is increasingly polluting social media and political discourse….
Category Archives: cheap speech
“State Department eliminates key office tasked with fighting foreign disinformation”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the agency’s hub for fighting foreign disinformation campaigns — the final nail in a yearslong effort to shut down the office accused by GOP lawmakers of censoring conservative voices.
In a statement, Rubio claimed the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office at the State Department, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center, had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.” According to Rubio, the relatively modest federal office expended “more than $50 million per year.”
“This is antithetical to the very principals [sic] we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America,” Rubio said. “That ends today. Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people, and this is an important step in continuing to fulfill that commitment.”…
A current State Department official, granted anonymity out of fear of retribution, said Wednesday that “the Kremlin and Chinese Communist Party are cheering today.”
“Our adversaries spread disinformation, deliberately meant to deceive and divide communities and nations and to attack the foundations of democratic societies,” the former official said. “Yet another fissure has been created in our national security that makes America even more vulnerable.”
Facebook Officially Abandons Cite Checking
ELB Podcast 6:7: Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker)
Season 6, Episode 7 of the ELB Podcast:
How did campaigning and false information in campaigns change in the 2024 elections?
What role did platform content moderation play in 2024?
Is generative AI going to change campaigns in 2028 and beyond?
On Season 6, Episode 7 of the ELB podcast, a roundtable with Alice Marwick, Kate Starbird, and Joshua Tucker.
You can subscribe on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Watched Archived Video of SDP Webinar, Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future
“Analyzing the Benefits of Artificial Intelligence to Racially Inclusive Democracy”
Spencer Overton has posted this draft (which I can’t wait to read) on SSRN (forthcoming, Utah Law Review). Here is the abstract:
Over the past two decades—as the United States has grown more ethnically diverse—the U.S. Supreme Court has dismantled key voting rights protections, and state legislatures have erected a record number of voting restrictions. Largely oblivious to this growing gap in legal protections, several artificial intelligence (“AI”) optimists have claimed that AI can help usher in a more inclusive, participatory, and unbiased democracy. Such an outcome, however, is far from guaranteed. This Article is the first to comprehensively examine the extent to which AI—and the legal frameworks that regulate it—can advance racially inclusive democracy. It responds to the AI optimism literature by offering a clear-eyed assessment of relevant political, racial, and economic barriers to AI making democracy more racially inclusive. This analysis reveals that some of the AI optimists’ technological and legal proposals could, in fact, exacerbate racial disparities in political power and harm voters of color. The Article acknowledges, however, that certain AI tools, if applied appropriately, could help reduce turnout gaps and increase government responsiveness to communities of color. Although good AI law is no substitute for an updated Voting Rights Act and a Supreme Court committed to protecting voting rights, embedding values of racial inclusion into AI law at this formative stage could shape the trajectory of our democracy. For example, laws ensuring broad access to public AI infrastructure (particularly in historically marginalized communities) and robust AI accountability laws can foster conditions in which AI is more likely to be used to benefit racially inclusive democracy.
March 31 Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar: “Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future”
Looking forward to this (free registration required):
| Monday, March 31, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar Alice Marwick, Director of Research, Data & Society, UNC Chapel Hill, Kate Starbird, University of Washington, and J oshua Tucker, NYU. Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA) |
March 28-29 Yale Conference: “Free Speech in Crisis and the Limits of the First Amendment”
Looking forward to speaking at this event (in person only):
Recently, the law of free speech has been marked by two seemingly inconsistent phenomena. On the one hand, the Roberts Court has been both praised and decried for its highly speech-protective view of the First Amendment. The First Amendment, we are told, has been weaponized; it is “imperial”; it is stronger than it has ever been. On the other hand, the First Amendment has been ineffective in combating the recent explosion of speech-restricting laws and government actions. Similarly, there has been pronounced private mobilization to suppress speech, ranging from doxing trucks that have plagued many campuses to powerful donor threats that have prompted universities to crack down on student speech. Here too, the imperial First Amendment has been largely unavailable as a safeguard of private speech.
This conference will explore these twinned phenomena from both normative and pragmatic perspectives. Is the fact that so much speech regulation lies beyond the scope of the First Amendment a problem for the doctrine? Or is it, conversely, a virtue? How can free speech values be protected and strengthened at a moment of political polarization and intensifying repression at all levels of government?
Agenda
Friday, March 28
8:30 a.m. | Breakfast & Registration | SLB 122 & Dining Hall
9:15 a.m. | Welcome/Opening Remarks | SLB 129
- Organizers: Jack Balkin, Genevieve Lakier, Mikey McGovern
9:30 a.m. | Panel 1: Media Environment | SLB 129
- Chair: Paul Starr, Princeton University
- Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School
- Mary Anne Franks, George Washington University School of Law
- Eugene Volokh, Hoover Institution
11:00 a.m. | Coffee Break | SLB 122
11:15 a.m. | Panel 2: Polarization | SLB 129
- Chair: Robert Post, Yale Law School
- Nicole Hemmer, Vanderbilt University
- Liliana Mason, SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University
- Ganesh Sitaraman, Vanderbilt Law School
12:45 p.m. | Lunch | Dining Hall
2:15 p.m. | Panel 3: Political Marketplace | SLB 129
- Chair: Rick Hasen, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
- Rick Pildes, NYU Law (subbing in for Pam Karlan, who was listed here earlier)
- Bradley A. Smith, Capital University Law School
- Ann Southworth, University of California, Irvine School of Law
3:45 p.m. | Coffee Break | SLB 122
4:00 p.m. | Panel 4: Workplace | SLB 129
- Chair: Amanda Shanor, University of Pennsylvania
- Helen Norton, University of Colorado School of Law
- Benjamin Sachs, Harvard Law School
- Liz Sepper, University of Texas Law School
Saturday, March 29
9:00 a.m. | Breakfast | Dining Hall
9:30 a.m. | Panel 5: Knowledge Production | SLB 129
- Chair: Amy Kapczynski, Yale Law School
- E.J. Fagan, University of Illinois Chicago
- Vicki Jackson, Harvard Law School
- Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University
11:00 a.m. | Coffee Break | SLB 122
11:15 a.m. | Panel 6: Campus Politics | SLB 129
- Chair: Genevieve Lakier, University of Chicago Law School
- Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley
- Athena Mutua, University at Buffalo School of Law
- Keith Whittington, Yale Law School
12:45 p.m. | Grab boxed lunch | Dining Hall
1:00 p.m. | Wrap-Up Conversation | SLB 129
- Organizers: Jack Balkin, Genevieve Lakier, Mikey McGovern
“As Facebook Abandons Fact-Checking, It’s Also Offering Bonuses for Viral Content”
Hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, users spread a false claim on Facebook that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was paying a bounty for reports of undocumented people.
“BREAKING — ICE is allegedly offering $750 per illegal immigrant that you turn in through their tip form,” read a post on a page called NO Filter Seeking Truth, adding, “Cash in folks.”
Check Your Fact, Reuters and other fact-checkers debunked the claim, and Facebook added labels to posts warning that they contained false information or missing context. ICE has a tip line but said it does not offer cash bounties.
This spring, Meta plans to stop working with fact-checkers in the U.S. to label false or misleading content, the company said on Jan. 7. And if a post like the one about ICE goes viral, the pages that spread it could earn a cash bonus.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said in January that the company was removing or dialing back automated systems that reduce the spread of false information. At the same time, Meta is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. The new Facebook Content Monetization program is currently invite-only, but Meta plans to make it widely available this year.
The upshot: a likely resurgence of incendiary false stories on Facebook, some of them funded by Meta, according to former professional Facebook hoaxsters and a former Meta data scientist who worked on trust and safety.
ProPublica identified 95 Facebook pages that regularly post made-up headlines designed to draw engagement — and, often, stoke political divisions. The pages, most of which are managed by people overseas, have a total of more than 7.7 million followers.
After a review, Meta said it had removed 81 pages for being managed by fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves as American while posting about politics and social issues. Tracy Clayton, a Meta spokesperson, declined to respond to specific questions, including whether any of the pages were eligible for or enrolled in the company’s viral content payout program.
The pages collected by ProPublica offer a sample of those that could be poised to cash in…
“Meta’s Oversight Board should just quit, critics say”
A coalition of advocacy groups from around the world is calling on Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board to resign en masse to protest the social media giant’s recent pullback on content moderation.
In an open letter shared with the Tech Brief ahead of its publication Thursday, the Global Coalition for Tech Justice says Meta “has abandoned any pretense of oversight” after the five-year-old board was reportedly blindsided by some of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s January policy changes.
The coalition, which says it represents more than 250 organizations and experts from 55 countries, criticizes the board for not publicly pushing back on changes that it says will foster lies, degrade discourse and fuel attacks on women and LGBTQ+ people.
“Trump and Musk Attack Journalists by Name in Social Media Posts”
NYT:
President Trump has made clear his animus toward mainstream media organizations. Now he’s getting more personal.
Mr. Trump and his key lieutenant, Elon Musk, who has been empowered to run what they call the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” have attacked journalists by name in recent days on the social media platforms they own: Truth Social and X….
Mr. Musk took aim at a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Katherine Long. Ms. Long was the first to reveal, in a report in The Journal on Thursday, that Marko Elez, one of Mr. Musk’s lieutenants in the Department of Government Efficiency, was linked to a since-deleted racist social media account that had posted statements like, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Mr. Elez resigned after The Journal approached the White House for comment, according to the article. It was Ms. Long’s first article in her new job at The Journal.
Mr. Musk said in separate replies on X on Friday that Ms. Long was “a disgusting and cruel person” and should be “fired immediately.”…
Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on X on Friday, saying that he disagreed with some of Mr. Elez’s posts but that they shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.” (Mr. Elez is 25 years old.)
“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” Mr. Vance wrote.
The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Journalists have a job to do and should never be attacked by high-ranking government officials for doing it,” Timothy Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, a free-expression nonprofit, said in a statement.
He added, “Musk’s call for this journalist’s firing contradicts his self-proclaimed free speech advocacy and reveals his hypocrisy.”…
“Trump continues federal purge, gutting cyber workers who combat disinformation”
The Trump administration has moved to push out a swathe of federal workers previously involved in combating election-related disinformation, according to three people familiar with the matter, amid allegations from congressional Republicans that their work unfairly targeted conservative speech online.
Roughly half a dozen employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who once worked in its Election Security and Resilience division were notified Thursday night they were being put on administrative leave, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
The move comes shortly after the installment of new DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, a close Trump ally. The former South Dakota governor told congressional Republicans in her confirmation hearing last month she shared their view that CISA should no longer be involved in efforts to combat the scores of online hoaxes peddled by the likes of Russia, China and Iran.
“As Secretary Noem stated during her confirmation hearing, CISA needs to refocus on its mission, and we are starting with election security,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Public Affairs at CISA, said in a statement.
McLaughlin added that the agency is “undertaking an evaluation” of how it handles election security, and “personnel who worked on mis-, dis-, and malinformation, as well as foreign influence operations and disinformation, have been placed on administrative leave.”
The ousters are the latest example of how the administration is targeting career government officials with prior connections, however tenuous, to efforts it disagrees with or that interfere with Trump’s agenda….
“Altered image of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in new ad raises ethics concerns”
A new television attack ad in Wisconsin’s hotly contested Supreme Court race features a doctored image of the liberal candidate, a move that her campaign claims could be a violation of a recently enacted state law.
The image in question is of Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit court judge. It appeared in a new TV ad paid for by the campaign of her opponent Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit court judge.
The winner of the high-stakes race on April 1 will determine whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court remains under a liberal majority or flips to conservative control.
The Schimel campaign ad begins and ends with a black-and-white image of Crawford with her lips closed together. A nearly identical color image from her 2018 run for Dane County Circuit Court shows Crawford with a wide smile on her face.
Crawford’s campaign accused Schimel of manipulating the image, potentially in violation of a state law enacted last year. The law, passed with bipartisan support in the Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, requires disclosure if political ads use audio or video content created by generative artificial intelligence. Failure to disclose the use of AI as required can result in a $1,000 fine….
Schimel’s campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said the image was “edited” but not created by AI.
Peter Loge, the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, said images should never be changed to give a false impression.
“That said, as these things go, it’s not that egregious,” Loge said of the Schimel ad….
“The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?”
Kaylyn Schiff, Daniel Schiff, and Natalia Bueno have written this article for APSR. Here is the abstract:
This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians “crying wolf” over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the “liar’s dividend,” may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.