Elections and Media

[Commentary] A president who once contended that nine unnamed sources in one report couldn't possibly be real is waking up to articles with source tallies that sometimes soar into double digits. For example, ProPublica said its Oct 4 report that Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were close to being charged with felony fraud in 2012 was “based on interviews with 20 sources familiar with the investigation, court records, and other public documents.” Trump can cry “fake news” all he wants, but the frequency and volume of leaks makes it difficult to sell the idea that reporters are simply making things up.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the panel will develop a "stronger partnership" with social media companies in order identify foreign entities trying to sow division within the country. "We're going to have to have a much stronger partnership where the intelligence committee identifies Russian troll farms like the one here, they share that information with the social media companies so they can identify those accounts and take them down," Schiff said. rep Schiff said these companies have to be "good corporate citizens" and dedicate more time and resources to properly monitor the threat of outside agents taking advantage of the platforms to influence attitudes or events in the US.

Facebook has said ads bought by Russian operatives reached 10 million of its users. But does that include everyone reached by the information operation? Couldn’t the Russians also have created simple — and free — Facebook posts and hoped they went viral? And if so, how many times were these messages seen by Facebook’s massive user base? The answers to those questions, which social media analyst Jonathan Albright studied for a research document he posted online Oct 5, are: No. Yes. And hundreds of millions — perhaps many billions — of times.

Facebook is testing a new feature to give users more information about news articles being shared on their feeds as the company fights allegations that its platform has been enabling the spread of misinformation. Facebook announced that it would be trying out a button that will show users more context about the subject of a shared article link as well as the source. “The additional contextual information is pulled from across Facebook and other sources, such as information from the publisher’s Wikipedia entry, a button to follow their Page, trending articles or related articles about the topic, and information about how the article is being shared by people on Facebook,” their blog post reads.

Recent and historical work in psychology shows mere exposure to fake news makes it spread. To understand why — and the extent to which false stories seep into our brains — we need to understand the psychology of the illusory truth effect. The more we hear a piece of information repeated, the more we’re likely to believe it. “Even things that people have reason not to believe, they believe them more” if the claims are repeated, Gord Pennycook, a psychologist who studies the spread of misinformation at Yale University, says. And recent research shows the illusory truth effect is in play when we hear or read fake news claims repeated, regardless of how ridiculous or illogical they sound. It’s research Google and Facebook must wrestle with as the world’s most powerful media organizations. When they do, it will be clear that it’s time for them to get serious about editing out falsehoods.

A sufficiently successful social platform is experienced, much like Uber, as a piece of infrastructure. Except, instead of wrapping its marketplace around a city’s roads, Facebook makes a new market around communication, media and civil society. This, from a founder’s perspective, is an electrifying outcome. But this cultural metastasis has led to a swift and less-than-discriminate backlash. Already, calls for regulating the largest internet platforms are growing louder while remaining tellingly vague. After all, what can a government realistically do about a problem like Facebook?

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee largely endorsed the findings of the intelligence community that Russia sought to sway the 2016 US elections through a hacking and influence campaign, and they called for a “more aggressive, whole-of-government approach” to ensure future elections are not similarly compromised.

“There is consensus among members and staff that we trust the conclusions of the ICA,” Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) said, referring to the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was behind hackings of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign director John Podesta’s e-mail account and had attempted to exploit public opinion by sowing false information, much of it through fake social media accounts. “But we don’t close our consideration of it,” he added. Chairman Burr also said that “the issue of collusion is still open” and would not be resolved until the committee’s work was done. He said that a deadline for the committee was the looming start of the 2018 primary season.

Facebook and Twitter have each agreed to appear before US lawmakers and testify publicly as part of a congressional probe into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Google has also been invited to testify at that hearing, scheduled before the Senate Intelligence Committee on November 1, but the search giant did not immediately comment on its plans Oct 4.

The rare appearance in front of one of the most powerful panels on Capitol Hill could prove to be a uniquely uncomfortable one for the country’s top technology companies. Facebook and Twitter, at least, are set to face tough questions -- for the first time, in the open — about the Russian-backed accounts and advertisers that took advantage of their platforms to spread misinformation ahead of Election Day. For now, though, Facebook and Twitter have not yet shared whether their chief executives — Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, respectively — would testify in front of Senate investigators.

Fight for the Future is going after the four Democratic Sens who joined with Republican Sens in voting to confirm Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to another term at the FCC. Many Democrats took to the floor during vote to decry Pai's deregulatory policies, particularly his proposal to roll back Title II classification of ISPs and rethink the Open Internet order's rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization; those against the confirmation said loudly they would vote against him, suggesting his policies were anti-consumer and anti-net neutrality. But Sens Joe Manchin (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Gary Peters (D-MI), Jon Tester (D-MT) voted to confirm Pai for another five-year term at the agency. Fight for the Future said it was targeting those lawmakers with crowdfunded billboards to be placed in their districts calling them out for their votes.

Reps Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Emanual Cleaver (D-MO), two black lawmakers, sharply rebuked Twitter this week for serving as “an avenue to spread racism and bigotry” — and threatened regulation if the tech industry as a whole doesn’t identify and suspend the accounts behind those messages. The calls for action came in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent on Oct 3.

For them, the tipping point appears to be reports that Russian agents sought to stir political unrest ahead of the 2016 presidential election by stoking racial tensions, even running ads targeting groups like Black Lives Matter. “As a result of the far-reaching nature of Twitter’s technology, we have seen an effort to undermine our democracy, create or fan flames of racial divisions, and spread hate speech that can ultimately cumulate into violence,” the two Democratic lawmakers wrote. “We are disturbed by the ease in which foreign actors were able to manipulate your platform to advance anti-American sentiments that both exacerbates racial tension and ultimately threatens our democracy,” they continued. “More importantly, we are disappointed by the silence from you and others in your industry on ways to counter such blatant manipulation of this medium to build racial animosity, the consequences of which are quite literally life threatening.”