Elections and Media

Several potential presidential candidates for the 2020 election have expressed an interest in policies that would battle monopolies in the US, including in the tech industry, said Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute. “Well more than six of the likely presidential candidates this next time around, we’ve had extensive conservations with about these issues,” he said.

Rebuilding Facebook’s content enforcement mechanisms to weed out harmful content could take 3 years or longer, said the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The good news is we started this in 2017, so even though this work will extend through 2019, I do expect us to end this year on a significantly better trajectory than when we entered it,” he added. Zuckerberg said that he would reveal more about the company’s plans to fight abuse in the near future in a series of posts.

Voters are quickly becoming accustomed to the barrage of conversational, sometimes annoying and mostly unregulated text messages sent by political campaigns, often asking whether they can “count on your vote” while offering quick reminders on elections and initiatives. Peer-to-peer texting platforms can be a useful political tactic. They allow campaigns to get in touch with tens of millions of people, and the method was partially pioneered by Sen Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign.

House Republicans withdrew from negotiations with Democrats over a pact that would have effectively barred both parties from using hacked or stolen material on the campaign trail in the fall of 2018.

When you build services that connect billions of people across countries and cultures, you’re going to see all of the good that humanity can do, and you’re also going to see people try to abuse those services in every way possible.

A volunteer member of the advance team for President Donald Trump blocked a photojournalist's camera as he tried to take a photo of a protester during a campaign rally in Indiana. A photo taken by Associated Press photographer Evan Vuccishows the volunteer stretching out his hand over the lens of a news photographer's camera after a protester disrupted Trump's campaign event. President Trump paced on stage at the Ford Center as the protester was led out.

At his rally on Aug 30 in Indiana, President Donald Trump unleashed his usual attacks on the news media, but he also added a refrain that should set off loud, clanging alarm bells. President Trump didn’t simply castigate “fake news.” He also suggested the media is allied with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — an alliance, he claimed, that is conspiring not just against Trump but also against his supporters. “Today’s Democrat Party is held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep-state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake-news allies,” President Trump railed.

Twitter said that it would begin requiring some organizations that purchase political ads on topics such as abortion, health-care reform and immigration to disclose more information about themselves to users, part of the tech giant’s attempt to thwart bad actors, including Russia, from spreading propaganda ahead of the 2018 election. The new policy targets promoted tweets that mention candidates or advocate on “legislative issues of national importance,” Twitter executives said. To purchase these ads, individuals and groups must verify their identities.

One of the key ingredients in Ron DeSantis’ victory in the Florida GOP governor’s race turned out to be makeup. The once little-known congressman spent so much time broadcasting Fox News TV hits from Washington in 2018 that he learned to apply his own powder so he could look as polished as he sounded. In his primary election campaign against Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, DeSantis’ cultivation of his Fox relationship made all the difference.