Elections and Media

Digital advertisements used to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election lacked disclaimers stating who paid for them. This was deliberate on the part of the platforms: Facebook and Google actively sought exemptions from mandatory disclaimer requirements that are standard for print and broadcast media.

A growing tech-skeptic chorus is drawing attention to the ways in which information technology disrupts democracy. No country is immune. With a better understanding of the principles undergirding both foreign and domestic responses to the threats posed by big tech, each subsequent section in this paper will lay out the specific dimensions of the political and economic problems that have arisen in the digital age, the policy responses and proposals pursued abroad, and the ideas guiding debate in the US.

The Federal Election Commission gave the go-ahead to a nonprofit organization seeking to offer free cybersecurity services to political campaigns, upending rules that typically consider such free services illegal campaign contributions. The FEC’s reasoning, in a nutshell, was that it ordinarily bans such services due to the possibility people might try to cash in on political favors later. But in this case, the risk of Russian and Chinese hackers running roughshod over the 2020 elections is far worse.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter executives came to Capitol Hill to testify about election security. Instead, they faced a grilling about whether their platforms are biased against conservatives. A string of Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee skipped questions about how the companies were tackling disinformation campaigns or preventing Russians from purchasing political ads on their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election.

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has spent far more than any single Democratic presidential candidate on Facebook advertising, reprising a strategy that was central to his 2016 victory. Since entering the race late in April, former Vice President Joe Biden has pumped more than $1 million into Facebook ads, outspending President Trump’s campaign for three of the past four weeks. Much of President Trump’s spending on Facebook advertising in recent weeks has gone toward ads that have been seen by older Americans, particularly women 55 and older.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is both of the tech world and one of its harshest critics. Viewed from a great distance, Yang’s candidacy has a lot in common with the two political comets that streaked across the 2016 presidential campaign: Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left. Yang runs essentially the same playbook: embracing economic grievance, hammering the tech giants and other darlings of the ‘new economy,’ selling his case directly to the working American.

Thanks to savvy lobbying by tech companies, online election campaign speech remains almost entirely unregulated. The platforms won exemptions from many campaign finance provisions by arguing that the rules would stifle their growth. They don’t have the legal requirements for ad disclaimers and disclosures — like keeping public logs of political sponsors — that television does. That’s how the Internet Research Agency, a home for troll accounts in St. Petersburg, Russia, could spend money on Facebook pages that worked for Hillary Clinton’s defeat without having to reveal its identity.

Three Florida radio stations will air two-minute snippets of Trump speeches every hour of every day -- perhaps sometimes twice an hour -- until the 2020 election. Samuel Rogatinsky, the owner of the stations, said, “We ran it by a bunch of listeners and people in the area, and nobody’s upset about it. It’s Republican territory. Nobody’s offended by it. It’s not an issue.” Rogatinsky’s newly formed company, Gulf Coast Media, recently purchased Classic Rock WRBA-FM 95.9, Country WKNK-FM “Hank FM” and Adult Hits WASJ-FM “BOB FM,” whose signals cover Bay County (FL).

Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Mark Warner (D-VA) reintroduced the Honest Ads Act to help prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve the transparency of online political advertisements. Sen Graham carries on the bipartisan legacy of the bill from the late Sen John McCain (R-AZ).  The Honest Ads Act ensures that political ads sold online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite. The Act:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the progressive firebrand whose rebukes of the tech sector drew headlines on the 2018 campaign trail, supports the outlines of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) sweeping proposal to break up tech firms like Amazon and Facebook. “The idea itself is something that I am supportive of because taking an antitrust approach I believe is absolutely relevant and it’s appropriate to take,” said Rep Ocasio-Cortez. Amazon’s role as “both the marketplace, producer, seller … creates an antitrust issue,” she said. Rep.