Elections and Media

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South bend), who has been a Silicon Valley favorite in the 2020 presidential race, is calling out several tech giants for harming workers. In his new policy plan, Mayor Buttigieg singles out Facebook, Google and Uber for troubling labor practices, and pledges to hold employers accountable under labor laws, strengthen unions and expand protections for gig workers. “The status quo with companies like Facebook and Uber setting the rules and government sitting on the sidelines must change,” the plan says.

Facebook is considering restricting politicians' ability to use highly detailed demographic and personal information to narrowly target would-be voters with ads, policy chief Nick Clegg confirmed in a possible shift in the social network's broadly permissive policy on political advertising. Clegg declined to discuss any other changes, saying the company is still in the decision-making process.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is the only Senate Democrat not co-sponsoring the Save the Internet Act, a bill to restore net neutrality rules that were enacted by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration and reversed in 2017 by President Trump’s FCC Chair, former Verizon attorney Ajit Pai. Instead, Sen Sinema has formed a working group with Sen.

We don’t need to rank in importance the issues of special interest money, ludicrous redistricting, and big media.  They are each part of a linked democratic challenge.  There can be no real democracy without curbing big money.  There can be no real democracy without making Congressional districts representative of the areas they encompass.  There can be no real democracy without an electorate informed by media that digs for the facts citizens need to help chart the future of our country.   Bring these three abuses under control and democracy can flourish again.  Only We the People can make

Internet freedom is increasingly imperiled by the tools and tactics of digital authoritarianism, which have spread rapidly around the globe. Repressive regimes, elected incumbents with authoritarian ambitions, and unscrupulous partisan operatives have exploited the unregulated spaces of social media platforms, converting them into instruments for political distortion and societal control.

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that.

Twitter and Facebook are staking out starkly different positions about how to handle political ads, but it is unclear how either approach will prevent the spread of misinformation. Some social-media websites have banned ads related to candidates, political parties and legislation. But blocking issues-based advertising, such as ads from advocacy groups or trade organizations, can be hard to enforce, tech executives and media buyers say.

Facebook's hands-off policy toward political ads poses a danger to our democracy. Giving politicians free rein to spread lies using political ads shows a disregard for the role Facebook and other social media platforms play in disseminating information to voters and how political candidates can abuse these policies to spread disinformation. First, it's important to understand the unique role Facebook and other social media platforms play when it comes to advertising. Facebook's business model is based on collecting as much data on its users as possible.

Twitter will ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politi

The top Democratic presidential candidates wrangled over their differing views on how to take on the unprecedented power of Big Tech, marking the first time the contenders have been asked to discuss the issue on the debate stage. Most of the candidates drew a contrast between their own views and those of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has called for breaking up top tech companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon. While other candidates agreed the government should take on Big Tech, they said they don't believe "breaking up" the companies will properly address issues including data p