A New Era for Trust and Safety

Plus the release of A Brief History of Tech and Elections - A 26-Year Journey

I want to thank so many of you for reaching out about last week’s newsletter. It always means a lot when someone tells me that they love reading what I write, but that one exposed me a bit more than most so I was nervous about publishing it. Hearing all of the feedback is the response I was hoping for when putting it out there. Tomorrow is photoshoot number two and I’m really excited.

This week’s newsletter is going to be a bit of a smorgasbord of things that happened this week as a lot happened and I have a ton to catch up on after being gone.

Trust and Safety Week

First, was Trust and Safety week out in Palo Alto, California where two conferences happened back to back: TrustCon put on by the Trust and Safety Professional Association and the Trust and Safety Research Conference put on by Stanford.

You have to register virtually to watch TrustCon but you can see the Thursday and Friday programming for the Trust and Safety Research Conference on YouTube

.I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be back in a room with so many smart people that I’ve had the privilege to either know, work with or follow over the years on these topics. I feel optimistic that there are people who want to keep working to find solutions to these problems. But the issues we discussed also give me great anxiety about the challenges that lie before us. 

While this community has been around for a while, this gathering felt like the start of a new era in the trust and safety field. More sharing and debate across the platforms, academia, the media, civil society, and governments is needed and all were present at these events. I really hope this becomes an annual thing.

Brief History of Tech and Elections - A 26-Year Journey

This week we also finally got to release the analysis of the database we put out in August with all of the tech company announcements on elections. In this report, my colleague Collier and I go through the years starting with the first campaign websites in 1996 to how the platforms are preparing for the 2022 midterms. It comes complete with images from the years and plenty of links should anyone want to dig deeper. 

It’s a bit of a long read at 40 pages - including the pictures - but I this is what I hope to be the start of the book I want to write. I would really appreciate any feedback folks have on it and/or anything I might have missed that I need to make sure to add.

NYU Stern Center Panel

This week I participated virtually in a panel at NYU about Spreading the Big Lie: How Social Media Sites Have Amplified False Claims of U.S. Election Fraud

Brazil Elections

As I type this Brazilians have about an hour to go before their polls close. This is an election with high concerns of violence should Bolsonaro lose - which is looking to be a likely situation. In fact, Lula - his opponent - could win outright today and not force a runoff. The New York Times has a live blog going. Should violence happen I’ll be watching to see if Bolsonaro hits the threshold for the platforms to kick him off.

Hocus Pocus 2

My family and I have been anxiously awaiting this movie and it did not disappoint. 

Brandie Carlile - In the Canyon Haze

Brandie Carlile is an artist who has popped up now and then for me but not someone I’ve sat down and listened to. I finally did that on the plane ride home when I listened to In the Canyon Haze. I’m now a new fan.

What I’m Reading

• New York Times: Even as Iranians Rise Up, Protests Worldwide Are Failing at Record Rates 

• Reuters: EXCLUSIVE Vietnam preparing rules to limit news posts on social media accounts

• The Information: Saint Frances of the Whistle: A Year After Frances Haugen’s Facebook Leak, Every Corporate Secret Is Now Up for Grabs

• Tech Policy Press - Sunday Show Podcast: Can Big Tech Platforms Operate Responsibly on a Global Scale?

• Politico: ‘It’s My Curse and My Salvation’: Trump’s Most Famous Chronicler Opens Up 

• Wired: Tech Companies Are Reconsidering an Old Enemy

• Bloomberg: Meta Freezes Hiring, Cuts Headcount, Slashes Budgets Across Teams 

• LoQueSigue: The Swedish election campaign is being manipulated on Twitter

• TechCrunch: Meta urged to pay reparations for Facebook’s role in Rohingya genocide

• WSJ: Meta Officials Cite Security Concerns for Failing to Release Full India Hate-Speech Study

• The Atlantic: Is This the Beginning of the End of the Internet?

• Washington Post: Camille Stewart Gloster shares her plans for new White House cyber gig

Think Tanks/Academics/Other

• Trust and Safety Journal: Researcher Access to Platform Data: European Developments

• Blake E. Reid: Uncommon Carriage 

• Science.org: Most users do not follow political elites on Twitter; those who do show overwhelming preferences for ideological congruity 

• Amsterdam University Press: Fifteen Seconds of Fame: TikTok and the Supply Side of Social Video

• Paddy Leerssen: An End to Shadow Banning? Transparency rights in the Digital Services Act between content moderation and curation

• University of Southampton: How Effective are Gamified Fake News Interventions? Reanalyzing Existing Research with Signal Detection Theory 

• Electoral Studies: The Israel Polarization Panel Dataset, 2019–2021

• David Carroll: We’ve had the backlash against Big Tech. Now what?

• Modernize Congress Committee: Business Meeting to Vote on Recommendations 

• NetChoice and Computer & Communications Industry Association: Response to 5th Circuit Ruling on Texas Social Media Law

• Haun Ventures: The Web3 Voter

• OpenAI: DALL·E Now Available Without Waitlist

• Election Integrity Partnership: 10 Factors That Shape a Rumor’s Capacity for Online Virality 

• European Commission: Keynote speech by EVP Vestager at the BEUC conference on consumer protection in the digital age

• France Council of State: Social networks: putting the user at the center

• Graphic: World's Population at 8 Billion People

• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy 

Companies

• Google: Search outside the box: How we're making Search more natural and intuitive 

• Meta: Introducing Make-A-Video: An AI system that generates videos from text 

• Meta: Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From China and Russia

• Meta: 2022 Foundational Integrity Research request for proposals 

• TikTok: An update on our work to counter misinformation

Job Openings

• Integrity Institute: Community Organizer, Partnerships and Operations Coordinator and Research Project Manager

• Wellspring Philanthropic Fund: Program Director, Civil Society

• Oversight Board: Senior Officer, Strategy & Development

  • Meta Oversight Board: Variety of positions open. More info at link.

• Freedom House: Policy and Advocacy Officer or Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Technology and Democracy

  • There are **many** open positions at Freedom House.  Check them out here: https://freedomhouse.org/about-us/careers

• National Endowment for Democracy: Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program 

• Democracy Works: Openings for software engineer and director of HR

• Atlantic Council DFR Lab: Variety of positions open. More info at link.

• National Democratic Institute (NDI): Variety of positions open. More info at link.

• Protect Democracy: Technology Policy Advocate

Calendar

• Topics to keep an eye on that have a general timeframe of the first half of the year:

  • Facebook 2020 election research

  • Oversight Board opinion on cross-check

  • Senate & House hearings, markups, and potential votes
    
    

• October 2 and 30: Brazil

• October 12 - 14: Conference for Truth and Trust Online

• October 15 - 22: SXSW Sydney

• October 17: Twitter/Musk Trial Begins

• November 1 - 2: Frontiers fo Digital Development Forum

• November 8: United States Midterms

• January 7: Meta/Trump Decision

• March 10 - 19: SXSW

• March 20 - 24, 2023: Mozilla Fest