Elections and Media

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has introduced a bill that would require on-air disclosures of content from foreign entities. The Foreign Entities Reform Act of 2018 (FERA) would amend the Communications Act to require broadcast, cable and satellite companies to disclose through the duration of the content when it has been supplied by a registered foreign agent, like RT, the Russia-backed video content that the Intelligence Community has concluded tried to influence the 2016 election.

A former Cambridge Analytica employee said that the data firm met with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in 2015, before President Donald Trump declared his candidacy. Christopher Wylie, a self-described whistleblower on the company’s data harvesting practices said that he left Cambridge Analytica before it formally teamed up with the Trump campaign.

Alexander Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.  Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, according to two former company insiders who said there were at least three meetings with Lukoil executives in London and Turkey.

Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign, harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.

The Trump administration imposed fresh financial sanctions on Russian government hackers and spy agencies to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and for a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries that officials have characterized as “the most destructive and costly” in history. Sanctions also were imposed on individuals known as “trolls” and the Russian organizations that supported their efforts to undermine the election. Additionally, the administration alerted the public that Russia is targeting the U.S.

The Federal Election Commission wants the public to weigh in on proposals that would shed light on the people buying political ads on Facebook, Google and other online platforms. The commission unanimously voted to release two proposals that would expand disclosure requirements for internet political ads for public comment. The new regulations—the first update to online political advertising rules since 2006–would require web platforms to disclose who paid for any “express advocacy” ads, which call on viewers to vote for or against a specific candidate.

[Commentary] The proposed acquisition of Tribune Media by the Sinclair Broadcast Group is under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department. Approval would likely trigger a hemorrhage in local reporting and voices and a sharp decline across much of the nation in balanced coverage of politics and government.

Reddit is made up of more than a million individual communities, or subreddits, some of which have three subscribers, some twenty million. But, no matter how neutral a platform may seem, there’s always a person behind the curtain. Is it possible to facilitate a space for open dialogue without also facilitating hoaxes, harassment, and threats of violence? Where is the line between authenticity and toxicity? What if, after technology allows us to reveal our inner voices, what we learn is that many of us are authentically toxic?

[Commentary] It seems as if you are never “hard core” enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. It promotes, recommends and disseminates videos in a manner that appears to constantly up the stakes. Given its billion or so users, YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century. This is not because a cabal of YouTube engineers is plotting to drive the world off a cliff. A more likely explanation has to do with the nexus of artificial intelligence and Google’s business model.

A review of the private Facebook messages, as well as interviews with the Trump campaign operatives who were targeted by Russians, reveal that Trump’s team was susceptible to Moscow’s interference campaign. It preyed on unsuspecting staff members who were more interested in capturing the enthusiasm of supporters of their unorthodox nominee and did not envision the seemingly far-fetched possibility that Russians might enlist them as unwitting players in a scheme to undermine American democracy.