Category Archives: social media and social protests

“Twitter Takedown Targets QAnon Accounts”

July 21, 2020, 7:42 pmsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

“Facebook begins labeling, but not fact-checking, posts from Trump and Biden”

July 21, 2020, 2:49 pmcampaigns, chicanery, fraudulent fraud squad, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

Facebook Posts Useless, Even Counterproductive, Notice Below Trump’s Latest False Posts About Mail In Voting Fraud

July 21, 2020, 7:50 amfraudulent fraud squad, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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

“What the Twitter Hack Revealed: An Election System Teeming With Risks”

July 16, 2020, 9:14 pmcampaign finance, chicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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

“‘Outright Lies’: Voting Misinformation Flourishes on Facebook”

July 16, 2020, 7:09 amsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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.… Continue reading

Hackers Take Over Biden Twitter Account Among Many Others in Bitcoin Scam; Next Time Things Could Be More Dangerous

July 15, 2020, 8:54 pmcampaigns, chicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

“Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier”

July 15, 2020, 8:33 amsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

Important Reuters report.

“Newsroom or PAC? Liberal group muddies online information wars”

July 14, 2020, 8:21 amcampaign finance, campaigns, chicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

“The QAnon Candidates Are Here. Trump Has Paved Their Way. The conspiracy theorists accuse Democrats and even fellow Republicans of being beholden to a cabal of bureaucrats, pedophiles and Satanists. President Trump has cheered them on.”

July 14, 2020, 8:04 amcampaigns, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

What is Facebook Going to Do About Voter Suppression on Its Site?

July 9, 2020, 8:45 pmsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

July 9 Zoom Event: “Pandemic Propaganda: A New Electoral Crisis”

July 8, 2020, 1:58 pmcampaigns, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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

“Facebook Fails to Appease Organizers of Ad Boycott”

July 7, 2020, 2:06 pmsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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

Greg Sargent: “Why Facebook probably won’t police Trump’s lies about voting”

July 2, 2020, 1:36 pmcampaigns, chicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

“Trump Retweets Racist Video Showing Supporter Yelling ‘White Power’”

June 28, 2020, 9:20 pmsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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

“Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him”

June 28, 2020, 9:12 pmsocial media and social protestsRick Hasen

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… Continue reading

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Election Law Blogger

Rick Hasen

Professor of Law and Political Science
University of California, Irvine School of Law

Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Professor of Law, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
@tabathaabuelhaj
View posts ›

Sam Bagenstos

Frank G. Millard Professor of Law, University of Michigan (on leave)
View posts ›

Bruce E. Cain

Professor of Political Science, Stanford University
View posts ›

Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Edward B. Foley

Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University
View posts ›

Heather K. Gerken

Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
View posts ›

Abbe Gluck

Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at Yale Law School (on leave)
View posts ›

Anita Krishnakumar

Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
View posts ›

Justin Levitt

Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles (on leave)
View posts ›

Derek T. Muller

Bouma Fellow in Law and Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
View posts ›

Spencer A. Overton

Professor of Law,
The George Washington University Law School
View posts ›

Nate Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
View posts ›

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law
View posts ›

Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Dan Tokaji

Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
View posts ›

Franita Tolson

Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law
View posts ›

Recent Books by Rick Hasen

Election Meltdown

Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy
(Yale University Press, 2020)

Election Law–Cases and Materials

Election Law–Cases and Materials (6th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2017) (with Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Daniel P. Tokaji, and Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos)

2021 Supplement

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer, 2020)

Recent ELB Podcast Episodes

The ELB Podcast

Season 3, Episode 1: Nate Persily: A Redistricting Season Like No Other

More podcast episodes ›

Recent Op-Eds & Commentaries by Rick Hasen

The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Opinion is Even Worse than It Seems, Slate, July 8, 2021

The Supreme Court is Putting Democracy at Risk, N.Y. Times, July 1, 2021

Democrats Should Leap at the Chance to Take Joe Manchin’s Deal, Slate, June 16, 2021

More op-eds and commentaries by Rick ›

Recent Academic Articles by Rick Hasen

Optimism and Despair About a 2020 “Election Meltdown” and Beyond, 100 Boston University Law Review Online 298 (2020) (part of symposium on my book, Election Meltdown)

Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, and How to Treat and Cure Them, Election Law Journal (2020)

More academic articles by Rick Hasen ›

Recent Books by ELB Contributors

Gerkin – The Democracy Index

The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It
by Heather K. Gerken

Persily – Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy
(Cambridge Press, 2020)
by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker

Pildes – The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, 5th ed.
(Foundation Press, 2016)
by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes and Nathaniel Persily

Tokaji – Election Law in a Nutshell

Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed., West Academic Publishing, 2017)
by Daniel P. Tokaji

Podcasts by ELB Contributors

Tolson – Free and Fair Podcast

Free & Fair with Franita and Foley
Franita Tolson and Edward Foley

Recent Articles by ELB Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 1225 (2018).

Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu & Emily R. Zhang, A Reasonable Bias Approach to Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation to Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1521 (2018).

Edward B. Foley, Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism (May 10, 2021). Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 61

Anita S. Krishnakumar, Cracking the Whole Code Rule (February 19, 2020). St. John’s Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-0002, New York University Law Review, Forthcoming

Justin Levitt, Failed Elections and the Legislative Selection of Electors, __ N.Y.U. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2021)

Derek T. Muller, Weaponizing the Ballot. 48 Florida State University Law Review 61 (2021)

Spencer Overton, Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression. GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-23, GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 2020-23, 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1793 (2020)

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, The Sweep of the Electoral Power (October 20, 2020). Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-07