“Bill would require disclosure of AI-generated content in political ads”
The WaPo reports on Rep. Yvette Clarke’s bill, but it may be even more notable that the N.Y. Democrat called out a recent RNC ad as a model.
Category Archives: cheap speech
“Exclusive: Dominion Voting Systems tells its Fox News lawsuit story”
Axios with a bit of oral history.
“Inside a private portal from GOP campaigns to local news sites”
WaPo:
The top Republican campaigns in Illinois used a private online portal last year to request stories and shape coverage in a network of media outlets that present themselves as local newspapers, according to documents and people familiar with the… Continue reading
“Supreme Court to decide if First Amendment stops government officials from blocking social media critics”
Tierney Sneed for CNN:
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will consider whether the First Amendment protects social media users from being blocked from commenting on the personal pages that government officials use to communicate actions related to their… Continue reading
“Why It’s Fine that Fox and Dominion Settled; Murdoch testimony would have been more fun to watch than Succession. But the trial wouldn’t have fixed the bigger problem.”
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:
What does the Fox (News) say? Not enough to save American democracy. But we never should have expected that a private defamation suit could have cured this country’s ongoing election panic… Continue reading
“As Fox News case heads to trial, far right St. Louis site faces its own defamation suit; A trial is scheduled for May 9 in St. Louis in a lawsuit filed by two Georgia election workers against The Gateway Pundit”
Missouri Independent:
They didn’t know it at the time, but Dec. 3, 2020, was the start of a nightmare for Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman.
Both were election workers in Atlanta, and that was the day Rudy… Continue reading
“Erosion, Backsliding, or Abuse: Three Metaphors for Democratic Decline”
Thomas Keck review essay in Law & Social Inquiry reviewing these three books:
Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, Abusive Constitutional Borrowing: Legal Globalization and the Subversion of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Stephen M. Feldman, Pack the Court:… Continue reading
“Twitter fails to report some political ads after promising transparency”
Politico:
Elon Musk took over Twitter last fall with a pledge of transparency for the social media giant — but so far political advertising on the platform has been anything but forthcoming.
Twitter has failed to disclose some political… Continue reading
“Meta won’t say if politicians can post AI-made fakes without warnings”
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
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
Interview with Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi
I missed this interview on Monday, talking at least in part about the impact of cheap speech on democracy (and about the Mackey conviction).
Still more defamation actions
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene notes Devin Nunes’s latest, about an allegation that federal investigators were looking into Trump Media for potential money laundering activities.
“Fiction vs Reality: My Texts with Michael Shellenberger”
Renee DiResta:
For several months earlier this year, I’d been chatting with Michael Shellenberger about the Twitter Files. He’d reached out to me in a Twitter DM on December 30th, telling me he wanted to better understand social media content… Continue reading
“Social Media Influencer Douglass Mackey Convicted of Election Interference in 2016 Presidential Race”
DOJ Release:
Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted today by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote. The verdict… Continue reading