Elections and Media

[Commentary] “Operation Golden Gate” was the name of a 1948 plan among the followers of a political movement known as Technocracy Inc. to converge on the San Francisco Bay area. These self-described Technocrats gathered from around the country to educate the public in their central belief: that politicians lacked the ability to effectively manage the complexities of the modern world and that the public should delegate decision-making instead to a small group of technological experts.

Photo fakery is far from new, but artificial intelligence will completely change the game. Until recently only a big-budget movie studio could carry out a video face-swap, and it would probably have cost millions of dollars. Artificial Intelligence (AI) now makes it possible for anyone with a decent computer and a few hours to spare to do the same thing. Further machine-learning advances will make even more complex deception possible—and make fakery harder to spot. These advances threaten to further blur the line between truth and fiction in politics.

Facebook has made a mint by enabling advertisers to identify and reach the very people most likely to react to their messages. Ad buyers can select audiences based on details like a user’s location, political leanings and interests. And they can aim their ads at as few as 20 of the 1.5 billion daily users of the social network. Brands love it. So do political campaigns. But microtargeting, as the technique is called, is coming under increased scrutiny in the United States and Europe.

To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.

[Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina and a contributing opinion writer at theNew York Times]

National advocacy groups including the ACLU, CREDO Action, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future and Free Press Action Fund are sending a questionnaire to 38 members of Congress — and those challenging them in the upcoming midterm elections — about the vote to restore net neutrality via the Congressional Review Act in the House, which needs a simple majority to pass. For incumbents: “Have you signed, or do you firmly commit within the next 30 calendar days to sign, the discharge petition for the House net neutrality CRA, and will you vote in favor of the net neutrality CRA if it comes up fo

Google is rolling out the online library of US political ads it promised lawmakers in 2017, along with a report detailing political ad-spending trends across its platforms.

The candidates running to become New York’s next attorney general each sought to assure a tech-friendly audience that they would be defenders of network neutrality and entrepreneurship during a candidate forum on Aug 14. Rep Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), Public Advocate Tish James, Zephyr Teachout and Leecia Eve — all running to secure the Democratic nomination in September’s primary election — made their pitches to protect industry actors while at the same time presenting themselves as bulwarks against the presidency of Donald Trump.

Russia’s social-media trolling operation began stepping up its Twitter presence to new heights in late July 2017 -- more than eight months after sowing discord and disinformation in the 2016 presidential election. The burst of activity -- revealed in a new, comprehensive dataset of nearly 3 million tweets -- had an overriding focus over the ensuing three months: popularizing headlines and news stories that were originally authored by a US-based news site called Truthfeed that supports President Donald Trump and specializes in hyper-partisan, factually incorrect stories.

Watchdog group Campaign for Accountability is calling for an investigation into political campaigns' use of "imbedded" Facebook and Google staffers. It wants the House and Senate Rules Committees to investigate the practice and whether new laws are needed to prevent what it says are edge providers "abusing their relationships" with Washington. 

The Chinese government certainly has the ability to pursue an online political disinformation campaign directed at foreign elections — but hasn’t yet because it favors long-term thinking over Russia’s scorched-earth foreign policy, experts said. Researchers note that China could turn its sights on the US if it wanted to. “The question for me and some other researchers is: will they make that jump more aggressively to the English language space in the more heavy-handed manipulation sense?