One Click Deeper - Is Fighting Misinfo Taking a Hit with Tech Layoffs?

It’s not as easy of a question to answer, but there’s reason to worry

This is my second paid version of the newsletter, and I want to try something new. One of the ideas I had for subscribers is where I’ll annotate reports, news stories, company announcements, etc., to go one click deeper. What are they missing? What are they getting right? What’s a different angle to look at the problem from? I want to look at yesterday's New York Times story titled “Combating Disinformation Wanes at Social Media Giants.”

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One Click Deeper

If you are a long-time reader of this newsletter or have heard me talk in the last two years, you know that I can’t shut up about all of the elections in 2024 and how I worry none of us are ready - including tech companies. 

The TL;DR of it is that next year, for the first time in the same year, we will have a U.S. Presidential election and elections in India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Taiwan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the European Parliament, and 60 other countries. It’s going to be not only a huge geo-political moment but a lot of fronts on which to protect the integrity of elections online and offline.

Image Credit: Anchor Change Election Cycle Tracker

With the tech layoffs, I am worried about how that will compound these companies' challenges. That said, teams do still exist. There are still people working on these issues (even at Twitter). That’s why I tend to get frustrated when news outlets try to make a simple conclusion from a subset of data - which is what I think the Times was doing with this story. 

So, let’s go one click deeper and dig into the pieces of this story a bit more.