Digital Content

At a time when political misinformation is in ready supply, and in demand, “Facebook, Google, and Twitter function as a distribution mechanism, a platform for circulating false information and helping find receptive audiences,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. For starters, said Colleen Seifert, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, “People have a benevolent view of Facebook, for instance, as a curator, but in fact it does have a motive of its own. What it’s actually doing is keeping your eyes on the site. It’s curating news and information that will keep you watching.” That kind of curating acts as a fertile host for falsehoods by simultaneously engaging two predigital social-science standbys: the urban myth as “meme,” or viral idea; and individual biases, the automatic, subconscious presumptions that color belief.

Stopping to drill down and determine the true source of a foul-smelling story can be tricky, even for the motivated skeptic, and mentally it’s hard work. Ideological leanings and viewing choices are conscious, downstream factors that come into play only after automatic cognitive biases have already had their way, abetted by the algorithms and social nature of digital interactions.

If, like an ever-growing majority of people in the U.S., you own a smartphone, you might have the sense that apps in the age of the pocket-sized computer are designed to keep your attention as long as possible. You might not have the sense that they’re manipulating you one tap, swipe, or notification at a time. But Tristan Harris thinks that’s just what’s happening to the billions of us who use social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, and he’s on a mission to steer us toward potential solutions—or at least to get us to acknowledge that this manipulation is, in fact, going on.

Harris, formerly a product manager turned design ethicist at Google, runs a nonprofit called Time Well Spent, which focuses on the addictive nature of technology and how apps could be better designed; it pursues public advocacy and supports design standards that take into account what’s good for people’s lives, rather than just seeking to maximize screen time. He says he’s moving away from Time Well Spent these days (his new effort is as yet unnamed), trying to hold the tech industry accountable for the way it persuades us to spend as much time as possible online, with tactics ranging from Snapchat’s snapstreaks to auto-playing videos on sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Experts are evenly split on whether the coming decade will see a reduction in false and misleading narratives online. Those forecasting improvement place their hopes in technological fixes and in societal solutions. Others think the dark side of human nature is aided more than stifled by technology.

As the political world looks to apply the lessons of Donald Trump’s victory to future campaigns, one of the few clear conclusions is that Facebook played an outsized role in propelling the candidate to his improbable win.

The company’s ability to affordably target hyper-specific audiences with little to no transparency gives it a distinct advantage over other forms of media, researchers and political operatives believe. Political ads on Facebook have fueled controversy. They spread Russian propaganda and reportedly helped the Trump team suppress black support for Hillary Clinton and aided a conservative political action committee in targeting swing voters with scaremongering anti-refugee ads. Yet the backlash is unlikely to dissuade future campaigns from deploying one of Facebook’s most potent tools. Even the threat of new regulation governing the disclosure rules for political ads on social media can’t stunt the company’s stock price, which continues to reach new heights. If anything, the controversies appear to be functioning like a giant advertisement for the effectiveness of Facebook’s political advertising business.

“I don’t lose sleep over Facebook’s business. I lose sleep over the future of democracy,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.

Researchers at the University of Washington have found a way to track a person’s location and app use through serving ads on mobile apps.

The result opens the door for significant privacy invasions through the app-based advertising system. The researchers obtained the information by purchasing a series of ads targeted to specific locations and apps, then checking which mobile subscribers fit the targeting. In experiments conducted on Android devices, the team was able to pinpoint a person’s location within eight meters through a targeted ad. They tested ads on 10 different apps, including Grindr, Imgur, Words with Friends, and Talkatone, all using widely available ad networks. By serving ad content to a user’s apps, the ad buyers could learn what apps the user has installed. That information could be sensitive, revealing a user’s sexual orientation or religious affiliation. Researchers could also find out when a user went to a specific place. After targeting ads to a specific location, the ad network would notify them within 10 minutes of when the user arrived.

In 2016 Russians bought online political ads designed to influence our election and divide Americans. The content and purchaser(s) of those online advertisements are a mystery to the public because of outdated laws that have failed to keep up with evolving technology. The Honest Ads Act would help prevent foreign actors from influencing our elections by ensuring that political ads sold online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite. On Oct 19, Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Waner (D-VA) will announce the introduction of bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by Sen John McCain (R-AZ) to prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve transparency of online political ads.

A top Facebook executive admitted that Russian agents had used the social network’s popular Messenger platform to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Facebook Messenger boss David Marcus disclosed that a “very small” number of the 470 accounts active in the Russian interference campaign were using Messenger to communicate with their users.

Marcus cautioned that the company was still determining, alongside federal investigators, how Russia-linked accounts may have tried to influence the U.S. political discourse in 2016. But he said inquiries “at this stage” showed that these accounts were not prolifically using his product. "My understanding is that it’s a very small number,” Marcus said. “The way that the platform was used is still being investigated right now on the Messenger side of things, but traditionally if you’re a page, for instance, you cannot message people. So people have to message you.” Messenger was reportedly used by some pages with ties to Russian operatives. Marcus, like other Facebook executives, argued that the work done by Facebook around the world was being wrongly “overshadowed” by the Russia “narrative.”

The European Union has given a thumbs up to the EU-US Privacy Shield in its first annual review of the framework for protecting cross-border data flows. The first annual report concluded the shield works, but could use some bolstering, including by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Overall the report shows that the Privacy Shield continues to ensure an adequate level of protection for the personal data transferred from the EU to participating companies in the U.S. The U.S. authorities have put in place the necessary structures and procedures to ensure the correct functioning of the Privacy Shield, such as new redress possibilities for EU individuals," the report concluded. "Complaint-handling and enforcement procedures have been set up, and cooperation with the European Data protection authorities has been stepped up," it said. "The certification process is functioning well - over 2,400 companies have now been certified by the U.S. Department of Commerce. As regards access to personal data by U.S. public authorities for national security purposes, relevant safeguards on the U.S. side remain in place."

A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that about one-in-six news stories about President Donald Trump or the administration (16%) during the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency included one of his tweets. Another element measured in the study was whether statements from the journalist or statements cited in a story gave an overall positive or negative evaluation of the Trump administration’s words or actions – or fell somewhere in between.

This deeper analysis reveals that the stories that included a direct tweet from Trump were more likely than others to have an overall negative assessment of him or his administration – that is, had at least twice as many negative as positive statements. Just over half of stories that had a tweet from Trump (54%) had a negative assessment, 12 percentage points higher than stories that did not contain any of his tweets (42%). (Overall, 44% of all stories studied during the time period studied gave a negative assessment.)

The headlines are eye-catching. Melania Trump is leaving the White House! Home renovation cable star Joanna Gaines has abandoned her HGTV show and husband Chip Gaines! Televangelist Joel Osteen is leaving his wife! None of the stories were true. Yet as recently as late last week, they were being promoted with prominent ads served by Google on PolitiFact and Snopes, fact-checking sites created precisely to dispel such falsehoods.

The enticing headlines served as bait to draw readers to fraudulent sites that masqueraded as mainstream news sites, such as People and Vogue. The fake news ads all worked the same way: They would display headlines at the top of the fact-checking sites that, once clicked, took readers to sites that mimicked the logos and page designs of legitimate publications. The fake stories began with headlines and large photos of the celebrities in question, but after a few sentences, they transitioned into an ad for an anti-aging skin cream. The fake publishers used Google’s AdWords system to place the advertisements on websites that fit their broad parameters, though it’s unclear if they specifically targeted the fact-checking sites. But that Google’s systems were able to place fake news ads on websites dedicated to truth-squadding reflects how the internet search giant continues to be used to spread misinformation. The issue has been in the spotlight for many internet companies, with Facebook, Twitter and Google all under scrutiny for how their automated ad systems may have been harnessed by Russians to spread divisive, false and inflammatory messages.