How will tech tackle the tsunami of elections in 2024

Welcome to the first episode of Impossible Tradeoffs! I’m so glad you are here.

I’m still learning to do show notes and all that good stuff, so please be patient. That said, do tell me if there’s more you want and/or need so I can make adjustments.

This week, my guest host is Crystal Patterson. She was on my team at Facebook for seven years and now is President of the Washington Media Group. She joins me to answer the hard questions such as if you could only order one of these would you choose french fries or ice cream? We also get into last week’s Congressional gathering on AI with tech executives and how companies will be preparing for the 2024 elections.

PS: If you have no idea what I meant when I said we’re doing this Bill O’Reilly “we’re doing it live” style, watch this clip.

Crystal Patterson and I.

Then I chatted with Rebecca Thein. Becca worked at Twitter in the pre-Musk times in trust and safety, focusing a lot on elections. We look at:

• Why 2024 is such a special election year

• Where the tech companies are today vis-a-vis elections

• Her background and work at Twitter

• The types of issues organizations have to be worried about

• How teams prioritize what they work on

• How companies can help people to vote

• The Facebook 2020 research on the platform’s impact on elections

• What she’s watching over the next 16 months

Rebecca Thein and myself during recording.

A few links to things referenced in the conversation include:

• The Integrity Institute’s work on elections - including a best practices deck for building an election integrity program (Part 2 is coming later this Fall)

• Josh Tucker on the The Lawfare Podcast: What Impact did Facebook Have on the 2020 Elections?

I didn’t reference it in the podcast, but another piece that might be interesting to folks on this topic is the brief history of tech and elections that I wrote for the Bipartisan Policy Center last year. It takes you on a 26-year journey of how we got to where we are today. And, should you need a list of every announcement a tech company has made on their work around elections, I got you covered as well.

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