Elections and Media

“We plan to put the consumer first by pushing policies that protect net neutrality, promote public safety, and provide meaningful privacy and data security protections that are seriously lacking today,” said Rep.

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which has been investigating the misuse of personal data by political campaigns, found that defunct political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica violated British law when it used improperly harvested Facebook data to aid Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and would face a significant fine if it were not already in bankruptcy.

Who was trying to influence your vote in the midterm elections? On Facebook, it was not always easy to find out.  Political advertisers are required to fill in a field that says who paid for the message in your news feed, but that does not necessarily tell you who they or their backers are. Entities can write whatever they want in that field as long as it's not deceptive or misleading. A growing number of Facebook ads in the run-up to the election took advantage of that loophole to obscure or conceal the identity and political motives of who paid for them – and Facebook did not catch it.

 Even as Silicon Valley has become more aggressive in battling foreign efforts to influence US politics, it is losing innumerable cat-and-mouse games with Americans who are eagerly deploying the same techniques used by the Russians in 2016. “Everyone’s witnessed the playbook playing out,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Now they don’t need Russia so much.

As Tennessee voters head to the polls, Senate candidate Phil Bredesen (D) is taking aim at Rep Marsha Blackburn’s legacy on broadband. In a recent campaign ad, former-Gov Bredesen calls out the House Telecommunications Subcommittee chair for having “voted against $600 million in broadband initiatives.” At issue: Blackburn’s March 2018 vote against the sprawling omnibus government funding bill that contained a series of committee-negotiated tech legislation central to Blackburn’s panel.

Twitter deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in the 2018 midterm election and wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company.  “We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman said. The removals took place in late Sept and early Oct. Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources familiar with the Democrats’ effort.

With less than a week to go now before the midterm elections, one of the biggest questions is whether younger voters will show up at the polls. Democrats have seized on network neutrality as an issue to get them to vote. Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) has said the net neutrality issue could excite and mobilize a sliver of the electorate in a way that's reminiscent of how the National Rifle Association has mobilized voters to passionately protect Second Amendment rights. "It may not be as important to 60 percent of the public," Sen Schatz said in 2017.

Sens Mark Warner (D-VA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), authors of the Honest Ads Act, urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to address significant apparent loopholes in Facebook’s ads transparency tool. While Facebook committed to implementing transparency measures similar to those that the Honest Ads Act would require, they are currently failing to carry out the basic disclosure and disclaimer provisions of the legislation. The major gaps existing in Facebook’s transparency tool could allow adversaries to exploit the platform with continued disinformation efforts. 

Americans living in "news deserts" with few or no local news outlets may be in a bind now that it's time to vote in the midterm elections. Fewer and fewer reporters are employed by the papers that typically cover community and state-level races. More and more of the papers are going out of business altogether. As a result there is less vetting of candidates and more confusion about what's even on the ballot. Americans have new tools in their hands -- cell phones with access to Facebook and other websites -- but social networks don't fill the void left by local reporters.

On Nov 6, Americans will choose the lawmakers who will try to hammer out privacy rules for major tech players like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Democrats are poised to take the House majority — and want strict privacy controls. Lots of things can — and do — change after elections: Committees get new leaders with new priorities; Other members shift as lawmakers jockey for a preferred spot somewhere else; Policymakers get overtaken by news events, shifting their plans.