Category Archives: social media and social protests
“Elon Musk stopped policing political misinformation. The tech industry followed.”
WaPo:
Social media companies are receding from their role as watchdogs against political misinformation, abandoning their most aggressive efforts to police online falsehoods in a trend expected to profoundly affect the 2024 presidential election.
An array of circumstances is fueling… Continue reading
“Biden administration tells US Supreme Court to review social media laws”
Reuters:
President Joe Biden’s administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a dispute over Republican-backed laws in Texas and Florida that would undercut efforts by social media companies to curb content deemed objectionable on their platforms.
The states… Continue reading
“Applying Militant Democracy to Defend Against Social Media Harms”
Neil Netanel has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Cardozo Law Review). Here is the abstract:
Social media inflict multiple harms on liberal democracy. Comprehensive meta-analyses of the scholarly literature conclude that social media are a significant factor in emergent… Continue reading
Issacharoff on Sloss’s “Tyrants on Twitter”
PSQ review:
With openness comes vulnerability. David Sloss’s new work, Tyrants on Twitter, elevates the abuse of social media by autocrats to a new war front, reminiscent of the concerns for foreign penetration during the Cold War. His response to… Continue reading
“What Meta’s New Studies Do—and Don’t—Reveal About Social Media and Polarization”
Wired:
LAST WEEK, THE first papers from a collaboration between Meta’s Facebook and a team of external researchers studying the 2020 election were finally published. Two of these studies asked: Are we trapped in filter bubbles, and are they tearing… Continue reading
“Election disinformation campaigns targeted voters of color in 2020. Experts expect 2024 to be worse”
AP:
As the 2024 election approaches, community organizations are preparing for what they expect to be a worsening onslaught of disinformation targeting communities of color and immigrant communities. They say the tailored campaigns challenge assumptions of what kinds of… Continue reading
“As social network Threads grows, voting rights groups worry about misinformation”
NPR: “Threads, the latest social media site created by Facebook parent Meta, is only a few weeks old, and it already has tens of millions of users. It may become a major source of election information, but the company… Continue reading
Breaking: “Appeals court temporarily blocks order that restricted feds’ contact with social media firms”
Politico:
A federal appeals court has put a temporary hold on a district court judge’s unusual order restricting a wide swath of federal officials and agencies from communicating with social media companies about content on their platforms.
A three-judge panel… Continue reading
“AI could create a disinformation nightmare in the 2024 election”
Joshua Tucker in the Hill: “[J]ust as social media reduced barriers to the spread of misinformation, AI has now reduced barriers to the production of misinformation. And it is exactly this combination that should have everyone concerned.”
“Secretaries of State brace for wave of AI-fueled disinformation during 2024 campaign”
Cyberscoop:
Secretaries of State are already preparing for election disinformation during the 2024 presidential campaign that will be supercharged by artificial intelligence, many of them told CyberScoop during the National Association of Secretaries of State Conference that’s taking place… Continue reading
“The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana”
Kate Klonick in the NYT:
No feat of rhetoric could disguise the flagrantly political nature of the federal court ruling on July 4 that restricted the Biden administration’s communications with social media platforms — but Judge Terry A. Doughty,… Continue reading
Civic Information Handbook
From Karen Kornbluh and Adrienne Goldstein, in collaboration with UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, comes this valuable resource. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:
Social media platform tools are better suited for campaigns seeking to manipulate… Continue reading
“Justice Dept. asks 5th Circuit to delay judge’s social media order”
WaPo reports on DOJ’s motion to stay the preliminary injunction limiting government communications with social media companies: “The 22-page request came just hours after U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty denied the Justice Department’s request for a stay. Doughty imposed… Continue reading