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
Category Archives: social media and social protests
Can’t wait to dig into this volume edited by Nate Persily and Joshua Tucker, with free access from Cambridge. Thanks Cambridge! … 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
CNN: Facebook’s fact-checkers on Sunday labeled as “partly false” a video that it said was manipulated to make it appear as if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was drunk or drugged. The video had been circulating on Facebook since Thursday and … Continue reading
Announcement: Misinformation and disinformation can be used to disenfranchise voters and erode public confidence in the legitimacy of our elections. As we observed in the United States in 2016, and in numerous other countries since, the spread of viral misleading … Continue reading
NYT: Twitter said Tuesday evening that it had removed thousands of accounts that spread messages about the conspiracy theories known as QAnon, saying their messages could lead to harm and violated Twitter policy.Twitter said it would also block trends related … Continue reading
CNN: After President Donald Trump posted an unfounded claim to Facebook (FB) on Tuesday that mail-in voting could lead to a “corrupt election,” the social network slapped a label on it. But the label did not attempt to fact-check the post as true … Continue reading
As I explained on Twitter: This warning seems pretty useless—it might even seem that Facebook is endorsing what Trump is saying and providing a path for more information. https://t.co/yc5KVeq4f0— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) July 21, 2020 … Continue reading
NYT: Over the past year government officials have raced to help states replace voting machines that leave no paper trail, and to harden vulnerable online voter registration systems that many fear Russia, or others, could hijack to trigger chaos on … 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
NYT: It was about 4 in the afternoon on Wednesday on the East Coast when chaos struck online. Dozens of the biggest names in America — including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Elon Musk … Continue reading
Important Reuters report. … Continue reading
Politico: The articles and Facebook ad dollars look like the efforts of a run-of-the-mill political group. But they are actually from a news outlet: CourierNewsroom.com, also known as Courier, which was created and funded by the Democratic-aligned digital organization Acronym. … Continue reading
NYT: A Republican Senate candidate recently declared herself “one of the thousands of digital soldiers” in service of QAnon, a convoluted pro-Trump conspiracy theory about a “deep state” of child-molesting Satanist traitors plotting against the president. A congressional candidate in Colorado who made … Continue reading
NYT interview with Rashad Robinson: Right, but I guess what I’m saying is that it seems like it’s just another cycle like we’ve had before. They’ll get some bad P.R. but see few consequences. Personally, as a journalist I struggle … Continue reading
Details: TopicPandemic Propaganda: A New Electoral CrisisDescriptionHow will the misinformation pandemic inflamed by the coronavirus crisis reshape the political landscape? And how might domestic and foreign actors weaponize rumors, conspiracy theories, and disinformation about Covid-19 against American voters in the … Continue reading
NYT: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s two top executives, met with civil rights groups on Tuesday in an attempt to mollify them over how the social network treats hate speech on its site.But Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and … Continue reading
Important piece: Under pressure to combat the disinformation that politicians — most notably the president of the United States — are spreading on its platforms, Facebook recently announced a new effort to combat lies geared in particular toward misleading Americans about voting.Disinformation … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump on Sunday retweeted a video of one of his supporters yelling “White power!,” once again using the vast reach of his social media platforms to inflame racial divisions in a nation roiled by weeks of protests about … Continue reading
WaPo: Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers, according to more than … Continue reading
Political Wire: Second, the Trump campaign’s high expectations were fueled by an organized online prank on TikTok, which aimed to get tens of thousands to register for the rally without ever intending to show up.TikTok is a short-form video app that’s … Continue reading
NY Times: Twitter added a warning to a post from President Trump about a racist baby on Thursday, saying it contained manipulated media designed to mislead people.Mr. Trump’s tweet, which he posted earlier on Thursday, featured a video of two … Continue reading
NYT: Hundreds of Facebook employees, in rare public criticism on Monday of their own company, protested executives’ decision not to do anything about inflammatory posts that President Trump had placed on the giant social media platform over the past week.Many … Continue reading
WaPo: Top Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, spoke with civil rights leaders last night as the company confronts a wave of backlash over its decision not to moderate President Trump’s controversial posts. But the roughly hour-long call, intended to show the … Continue reading
NYT: The Trump administration is preparing an executive order intended to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for what gets posted on their platforms, two senior administration officials said early Thursday.Such an order, which officials … Continue reading
WSJ: A Facebook Inc. team had a blunt message for senior executives. The company’s algorithms weren’t bringing people together. They were driving people apart.“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it … Continue reading
Ben Smith: New: Twitter has added a "get the facts" link to a false Trump tweet about mail-in voting, which links to a moment refuting his claim. (background here https://t.co/wCQQZtq6vs) https://t.co/P1YAgDzCom— Ben Smith (@benyt) May 26, 2020 … Continue reading
Very excited about this, and grateful to Dan Blair, Chad Flanders and the folks at St. Louis U. that made this happen: Childress Lecture Deep Fakes, Bots, and Siloed Justices: American Election Law in a “Post-Truth” WorldRichard L. Hasen Truth, … Continue reading
Rantt Media reports. … Continue reading
AP: A bitterly partisan debate unfolding on whether more Americans should cast their votes through the mail during a pandemic is provoking online disinformation and conspiracy theories that could undermine trust in the results, even if there are no major … Continue reading
Yasmin Dawood has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Ohio State Technology Law Journal). Here is the abstract: This Article argues for a multifaceted public-private approach to the challenge of protecting the electoral process from the harms of disinformation. Such … Continue reading
The Markup: Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a post pledging to combat misinformation about COVID-19 circulating on Facebook.“We’ve taken down hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation related to COVID-19, including theories like drinking bleach cures the virus or that … Continue reading
WaPo: The ads on Facebook sounded populist and passionate: “The people are rising up against these insane shutdowns,” they said. “We’re fighting back to demand that our elected officials reopen America.”But the posts, funded by an initiative called “Convention of … Continue reading
NYT: An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop … Continue reading
Spencer Overton has written this article for the UC Davis Law Review. Here is the abstract: Fake social media accounts and ads did not merely polarize the American electorate in 2016 — these tactics also targeted and suppressed Black votes. … Continue reading
The Hill: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that protests against stay-at-home orders organized through his social media site qualify as “harmful misinformation” and are taken down.“How do you deal with the fact that Facebook is now being used to organize a … Continue reading
Vice: Chinese state media has been flooding Facebook and Instagram with shady political ads praising Beijing and bashing “racist” President Trump as part of a wider campaign to rewrite its part in the global coronavirus pandemic.The undisclosed political ads, from … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
NYT: What began online more than two years ago as an intricate, if baseless, conspiracy theory that quickly attracted thousands of followers has since found footholds in the offline world. QAnon has surfaced in political campaigns, criminal cases, merchandising and … Continue reading
In the WSJ: Facebook said it would remove or label misleading videos that had been edited or manipulated in ways that would not be apparent to the average person. That would include removing videos in which artificial intelligence tools are … Continue reading
The NYT has published an internal memo written by the Facebook exec overseeing advertising during 2016. The memo touches on Russian ad spending, misinformation, Cambridge Analytica, and more. I have yet to see a headline on stories reporting the memo … Continue reading
The Wall St. Journal highlights the social media fight against disinformation ahead of the 2020 census. … Continue reading
NYT: In 2018, Lisa Kaplan assembled a small team inside the re-election campaign for Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine. Wary of how Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, it set out to find and respond to political disinformation online.The team … Continue reading
AFP: “There’s always been a divide between liberals and conservatives in the United States over opinions,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at University of California, Irvine.“Where things have changed is that there’s now much more … Continue reading
NYT: The decline in confidence is particularly pronounced by party. Today about 69 percent of Democrats have a great deal of confidence in the media, compared to just 15 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of independents, according to Gallup.Conservatives are less trusting … Continue reading
Marietje Schaake oped in FT. … Continue reading
Issue One: Issue One’s latest report, “Digital Disaster: The failures of Facebook, Google, and Twitter’s political ad transparency policies,” reveals how piecemeal, voluntary approaches by the largest social media platforms to stop disinformation campaigns fail to protect our political system from foreign … Continue reading
LAT: Election officials and social media firms already flummoxed by hackers, trolls and bots are bracing for a potentially more potent weapon of disinformation as the 2020 election approaches — doctored videos, known as “deep fakes,” that can be nearly impossible to … Continue reading