Really, We're Not Fine: When breaking news blocks out other important news

With all the attention on Israel and the Speaker's race I worry about us overlooking other key stories that will have a lot of impact on our lives

Since Labor Day, I’ve been doing a lot of talks about where we are and what to expect in 2024. I’ve described it as a kaleidoscope to many, but reality looks a lot more like this character from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

You start describing one problem and what the solutions might be, and then you realize those solutions run up against other issues like pending Supreme Court cases, and you find yourself back to square one. I struggle to make any predictions beyond the fact that the world will look much different in 2025 than it does now. Add people asking me to make predictions for 2025 or look even further ahead to 2040, and my head explodes. I have a giant Post-it note on my fridge trying to look back in twenty-year increments to help me think about the next twenty. So, my apartment walls do look like the above.

My original plan this week was to write more about this question of news and politics on the platforms. I’m not done thinking through that, but I realized this morning that with all the attention being sucked into the Speaker’s race in the United States and the conflict in Israel, many other important stories are getting pushed out of the spotlight. While understandable, it also makes me worried for next year when I think we’ll look back on this time and think of it as the “slower” times.

To ensure we don’t forget about some other significant stories, I wanted to share five that I want to make sure we don’t forget about.

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1. Taiwan’s election is only 80 days away—two and a half months. On Sunday, 60 Minutes had, for the first time, representatives from the Five Eyes (intelligence leaders from the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand) share a warning about China’s global espionage campaign. One line stood out to me where Ken McCallum of the U.K. said, “I would say that if you are operating at the cutting edge of tech in this decade, you may not be interested in geopolitics, but geopolitics is interested in you.” That is a broader topic for another time, but China’s efforts here start first and foremost with Taiwan. With Russia invading Ukraine and the conflict in Israel, we have to be ready for something happening here. It could start with this election.
   

2. Can government officials block people from their social media accounts? A lot of ink has been spilled for two cases the Supreme Court is taking up vis a vis tech this term - one around the laws Texas and Florida passed about how platforms like Facebook can moderate content - and another that they agreed to on Friday about how the government and social media platforms can engage with one another. There’s a third that hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as I think it should, and that’s one about whether or not government officials can block people from engaging on their social media platforms. Arguments are Tuesday, October 31.
   
   Why does this matter? At first blush, I can understand why people think that anyone should be able to engage with their elected official. However, many elected officials - especially women - face terrible harassment online. It can drive many of them not to run. If they are required to keep those comments up on their pages, it could cause fewer people to run for office, or if they do, not use online tools to engage with their constituents. And, while many in the U.S. do not think the internet has helped democracy, many other countries think it has. And, while this decision technically only affects the U.S., I think it will impact government officials around the globe.
   

3. What are broadcast and cable stations’ policies on using AI in ads - especially political ones? It can be an easy trap to fall into when thinking about using artificial intelligence in ads that we first ask the platforms what their policies are on it. After all, it is the online platforms like Meta and Google that created political ad libraries to provide more transparency around these ads. Something we haven’t seen from any other industry. That said, according to Ad Impact, most of the ad spend - at least in the United States - will be on broadcast and cable. AI has already been used in ads on those entities. In addition to asking how platforms are going to handle them (Google has already announced their policy), I’d be asking broadcast and cable stations if they will be accepting ads using AI and/or will require any disclosure. Or are they just going to see what the FEC says? And, if that’s the case, why are we expecting the platforms to self-regulate here but not others in the media?
   

4. Oversight Board’s deliberation on the altered video of President Biden. This week, I participated in a panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Insitute on a new case the Meta Oversight Board has taken up over a video of President Biden that was changed to make it look like he was doing something inappropriate when he was not. The public comment period just ended, and now the Board will do its thing and likely release a decision and recommendations to Meta sometime in early 2024. This case matters not because it’s about Biden but because it is hard to define what is and isn’t okay for people to do in terms of editing videos, creating commercials, and overall political speech. If I’m a political consultant, I’m twisted in all sorts of knots right now, not knowing what I can or cannot do when making commercials, and it’s no longer the FEC I have to look to for guidance but navigate the gauntlet of what all the different online platforms are allowing. This and rules around AI use in ads could change the political video landscape.
   

5. Journalists vs News Influencers. Okay, I couldn’t help but work one story in about news online, but a new poll I shared Sunday has been sticking with me. Many of you have probably heard the headlines about how Gen Z is going to places like TikTok and Instagram for news. But then, a recent study challenged that by saying TikTok rarely recommends news accounts. Why the discrepancy? The second study focused on traditional media outlets, while other studies have shown that influencers are outranking journalists as news sources. Yet, many influencers use traditional media reporting in their posts. Will traditional media adapt to these new habits, or will a new type of news reporting and analysis emerge?

There are many other stories you’ve heard me rant about that we don’t talk enough about, such as India, podcasting, the shift to streaming, and China and Russia’s influence on South America and Africa, which are also important. And there are a ton of others that could shift the conversation in a heartbeat. So, I will embrace the post-its and red string if it helps us keep track of it all. 

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.