Social media and other tech companies are finally considering their approach to political ads and political content. In the past, Twitter and TikTok stated that they won’t host political ads, while Facebook defended the move in front of the US Congress.
“Given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters’ confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms,” Scott Spencer, VP, Product Management, Google Ads stated on the Google Blog on Wednesday.
The strategy will be tried out in the impending UK elections, the upcoming EU elections and in all other countries by January 6, 2020.
The newest entrant to this club is Google. The company, it seems, has finally put restraints on political ads targeting voters based on age, gender, and location. Advertisers will not get any access to users’ political leanings or their public voting records.
US Election 2020, Vote Rigging And Tampering
The US Presidential Election 2020 will be the testbed for political content on social media platforms and its effects on voting patterns. Google, Twitter and Facebook have all been accused of influencing the 2016 elections and held responsible for bringing President Donald Trump to power.
The effect of all such policies will only be known post this election. One thing is certain, whether tech companies abstain or get involved in political content, their effect on any election globally cannot be denied.
“Given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters’ confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms,” Scott Spencer, VP, Product Management, Google Ads stated on the Google Blog on Wednesday.
The strategy will be tried out in the impending UK elections, the upcoming EU elections and in all other countries by January 6, 2020.
While all tech companies are taking steps to stay away from politics, Facebook seems to be the odd one out. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended political ads in front of the US Congress. However, even its subsidiary WhatsApp has not left things as they were.Related Stories
ZDNet reported on Thursday that WhatsApp banned nearly half a million accounts spreading misinformation in the Brazilian elections. Whether it impacted voting in any way is not yet known, but a massive crackdown on automated and bulk messaging was done. The interesting thing is that it was criticised by the winning party when it took the step.
Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on Sadiq Khan by suggesting the London mayor was to blame for the hacking of the Metropolitan Police’s Twitter account.
The president retweeted a post by former reality TV star Katie Hopkins, who took a screenshot of one of the messages.
In the tweet, Ms Hopkins wrote: “The Met Police.
“Officers says they have lost control of London streets. Apparently they lost control of their twitter account too.”
Mr Trump then retweeted her comments, adding: “With the incompetent Mayor of London, you will never have safe streets!”
TWITTER has taken Journalists hostage; they are trapped in a morass of mostly subjective viewpoints and misleading claims most of the times. Are Journalists up to this task – “The Unraveling“; navigating their way out; identify and discard misinformation and propaganda; but emerge with something substantive …a highlightof happenstances that directly affect ordinary men and women on the street; in the villages; like explaining difficult concepts =inflation, trade deficit, climate change in ways that reflect their contexts and circumstances; and in their language too.
TWEETING #JOURNALISM: 20 JOURNALISTS WORTH FOLLOWING ON TWITTER IRENE PADOVESE,
|Mathew Ingram, CJR|AIWA! NO!|Twitter may not have the same globe-spanning reach as Facebook, but one group of professional users has adopted it en masse: journalists. The lure of an always-on, news-heavy social network that includes access not just to an audience of consumers but direct input from newsmakers like Donald Trump is impossible to resist for many in the media. But is this a good thing? Journalists often say they spend too much time on Twitter, and wind up devoting more time than they should to stories that come to them via tweets. Should Twitter play such an oversized role in what the media chooses to cover and how they cover it?
A new study attempts to get at whether journalists ascribe too much importance to Twitter. Shannon McGregor of The University of Utah and Logan Molyneux of Temple University performed an experiment in which they showed about two hundred journalists—some who use Twitter heavily and some who use it only moderately—a selection of anonymous tweets that mentioned news stories, along with tweets from the Associated Press wire account with links to AP stories. They then asked the journalists to rate the newsworthiness of the tweets. The result? Journalists who said they spend a lot of time on Twitter and rely on it for their work ranked the anonymous tweets as high or higher than the AP stories (this effect declined the longer a journalist had been working in the industry).
“Our results indicate that the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment,” the researchers write. “For journalists who incorporate Twitter into their reporting routines, and those with fewer years of experience, Twitter has become so normalized that tweets were deemed equally newsworthy as headlines appearing to be from the AP wire. This may have negative implications.” Among those implications, they argue, is that journalists can get caught up in a kind of pack mentality in which a story is seen as important because other journalists on Twitter are talking about it, rather than because it is newsworthy.
The researchers argue it can also distort the way a story is reported. For example, when the photo of Chris Christie looking uncomfortable while standing behind Donald Trump in 2016 was published by the AP, Twitter exploded with jokes, and multiple news outlets wrote about it, but those familiar with Christie said there was nothing unusual about his expression. There are also more serious examples: The study notes a study of tweets posted by Russian agents working for the notorious “troll farm” known as the Internet Research Agency found more than 30 news outlets—including NPR, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed—had embedded tweets from fake accounts in their news stories.
Although there are potential downsides to journalists relying so much on Twitter, the researchers did highlight one potential positive: The social network may be broadening the range of sources beyond traditional information gatekeepers. “To the extent that the public now constructs its own news feeds by combining traditional media, social media, and algorithmic recommendations, this power is redistributed,”they write. “The benefit, from a democratic standpoint, may be that journalists could come to rely less on official or elite sources, and begin to include a wider range of news sources coming through social media.”
Here’s more on the complex relationship between Twitter and the media:
Misinfo central: Despite Twitter’s recent attempts to crack down on misinformation and fake accounts, a recent study found that more than 80 percent of the users and accounts that spread misinformation during the 2016 election are still active. “Twitter has absolutely taken some measures to take some sites down, but they have not taken the vast majority of what we looked at down,” one of the researchers told Politico.
Likes as a weapon: In a new book entitled “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media,” two national security experts write about how social media is being used to expand the theater of war. “We saw how not just the definition of those war zones was expanding, but also how the very same tactics, the very same players, were popping up in other realms, from politics to news,” they told The Atlantic in a recent interview.
Fake news laws: A number of countries including Kenya and Egypt are either considering or have already passed legislation aimed at getting rid of “fake news,” but in Singapore, BuzzFeed News reports that there is a concern among local journalists the legislation proposed in that country could become just another tool for the government to go after journalists and media outlets they disapprove of.
Losing the war: Despite a crackdown by both Twitter and Facebook, some experts say we are losing the war against social-media misinformation, because the professional trolls who want to misuse those networks are changing their methods. “The fake news merchants are a step ahead, thanks to techniques that allow them to mask their location, masquerade as local activists and purchase political ads in countries’ local currencies to dodge rules against foreign influence,” a recent Politico piece argues.
Identify yourself: Since much of the misinformation problem seems to be driven by bots or automated accounts, California recently passed a law that requires automated accounts to identify themselves as bots. The law, whichtakes effect next year, makes it illegal for bots that are interacting with California consumers to pretend they’re human if they’re trying to sell goods, services, or to “influence a vote in an election.”
Watch those tweets: In the latest example of a journalist undone by their own tweets, the Washington-based correspondent for Russian news service RT is facing a “disciplinary review” after she posted tweets praising the gulag prisons set up by dictator Joseph Stalin. Sameera Khan shared two posts (which have since been deleted) arguing that the prisons weren’t as bad as liberals claim. Khan has since apologized, and RT said it “strongly condemns the posts.”
Other notable stories:
Forbes is partnering with Civil, the startup that is trying to build a platform for journalism using cryptocurrency and the blockchain. The magazine becomes the first traditional publisher to experiment with the platform (although Civil also has a partnership with Associated Press), which will involve simultaneously publishing some of its content on the Civil blockchain as well as on the magazine’s website. (CJR profiled Civil here.)
Facebook is setting up a task force that will try to prevent bad actors from influencing voters in India’s elections next year, according to a report from the news service IANS. “The team will have security specialists and content specialists, among others, who will try to understand all the possible forms of election-related abuse in India,” Facebook’s vice president of global policy solutions said during a workshop in New Delhi.
Amanda Darrach writes for CJR about the political polarization of the small town of Santa Clarita, California, where new owners acquired the local newspaper and turned it inexorably towards the right, to the point where a group of local residents decided to start their own competing outlet.
