Category Archives: campaigns
“Facebook Fallout Deals Blow to Mercers’ Political Clout”
NYT:
Last month, a friend of the wealthy conservative donor Rebekah Mercer arrived at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. His task: Find out what — if anything — could repair relations between Facebook, the world’s biggest social media company, and Cambridge… Continue reading
“Are Algorithms the New Campaign Donation?”
Jacob Metcalf for Slate.
Twitter Announces Support for Honest Ads Act—Though It Won’t Help With Much of the Problems with Twitter
Twitter is pleased to support the Honest Ads Act. Back in the fall we indicated we supported proposals to increase transparency in political ads.
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) April 10, 2018
As with troubling foreign content on Facebook… Continue reading
“Facebook Launches New Initiative to Help Scholars Assess Social Media’s Impact on Elections”
Release:
Today, Facebook is announcing a new initiative to help provide independent, credible research about the role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally. It will be funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Democracy… Continue reading
“The Moscow Midterms: How Russia could steal our next election.”
Claire Malone for 538.
“Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump”
Tom Dickinson deep dive in Rolling Stone.
(How) Will Facebook Self-Regulate “Issue Ads” Intended to Affect U.S. Elections? The Details Matter a Lot
Via the NY Times comes news that Facebook will not only support passage of the Honest Ads Act (currently pending in committee where it may stay), but will also self-regulate “issue ads.” The self-regulation is important, because it may be… Continue reading
Final Version of My “Cheap Speech” Paper Now Posted on SSRN
I have posted on SSRN the final version of my paper, Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy), 16 First Amendment Law Review 200 (2018).
Here is the abstract:
In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995… Continue reading
“Facebook pledges to tighten election security ahead of midterms”
USA Today:
Though Facebook is pledging to bring “unprecedented” transparency over political messaging, executives refused to say if Facebook supports proposed federal legislation to regulate political ads on the social network and disclose the identities of those who buy them.… Continue reading
“NRA Says It Receives Foreign Funds, But None Goes To Election Work”
NPR:
The National Rifle Association acknowledged that it accepts foreign donations but says it does not use them for election work — even as federal investigators look into the role the NRA might have played in Russia’s attack on the… Continue reading
“California Lawmakers Want Twitter Bots Branded With Disclaimers”
Motherboard:
While Congress has done essentially nothing, many states—including Maryland, New York, and Washington—are drafting regulations that would attempt to reign in bots. In California, two bills—AB 1950 and SB 1001—would force Silicon Valley giants to identify… Continue reading
“Small Donors in Congressional Elections”
Tyler Culberson, Michael McDonald, and Suzanne Robbins have written this article for American Politics Research. Here is the abstract:
Candidates raise substantial sums of money to compete in federal elections. Scholars and election observers are concerned by potential corruption related… Continue reading
“U.S. companies are pressuring their workers on how to lobby and vote”
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez for The Monkey Cage:
.S. businesses are cultivating a new political resource: their own workers. When Republicans wrote their tax bill late last year, many companies pushed their employees to support specific policy provisions and to… Continue reading