The 2024 elections are almost here

A check list of what platforms need to do to get ready. Plus, I'm launching a podcast called Impossible Tradeoffs.

This week feels like the first week back to school for me. Even though I’m not in school, there’s a marking of time the Labor Day weekend in the States does for me when I transition from summer into fall mode. I’m not quite in the full-on pumpkin spice and sweater mode yet - it is in the upper 90s this week in DC - but I did buy a new notebook and some new office supplies and getting myself settled in for what will be a BUSY Fall.

This is one of my favorite mugs from Coffee and Motivation.

First up - I’m finally launching my podcast!!! I’m calling it Impossible Tradeoffs. 

Here’s a little description of what it’s all about. You can hear more in the trailer:

Technology and democracy are at a crossroads. Technology can potentially empower people and make our democracies more responsive. Or technology can be used to manipulate and divide us. Welcome to Impossible Tradeoffs. I’m Katie Harbath. In this weekly podcast, we’ll talk about and analyze the most fascinating headlines. We’ll make predictions about where things are going. And we’ll talk to experts about the challenges we face and how we might look for solutions.

In true Taylor Swift fashion, I’ve separated the podcast into two eras. We will have the international era and then the elections themes era, where we’ll talk about things like AI, political ads, platform election policies, etc.

Follow the podcast now and be ready for when the first episode drops later here in September!

Second, Anchor Change is featured in Sarah Fay’s newsletter! Check it out to get a little behind the scenes of why I started this newsletter, my approach, and how I’m thinking about it going forward. Sarah’s been a big help this summer, and I appreciate it.

Third, long-time followers and readers know my obsession since January 2020 has been the huge number of elections happening next year. I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am shocked at how many people still don’t realize the tsunami coming our way. 

As a reminder, it’s the first time ever (trust me, I did the math going back to India’s first elections in the early 1950s) that in the same year as a U.S. presidential election, we’ll have elections in India and Indonesia, Ukraine (maybe), Taiwan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the European Parliament. 

Overall, I’m tracking 65 national-level elections in 54 countries. This could ebb and flow numbers-wise as snap elections happen or dates move around, but still - it's a lot.

And not enough people and organizations are realizing this yet. That’s a problem because they will be here before we know it - Taiwan is up first on January 13, 2024, only 129 days away. 

That means it’s really, really, really time to start preparing. If I were at a platform, here’s the checklist I’d be going through…

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. I’m just short of 200 paid subscribers, and your support can help me reach that milestone!

Much of this is covered in the Elections Integrity Best Practices deck that the Integrity Institute launched in May. Part two is coming out this Fall, which will have even more!

1. Leadership buy-in - This is easier said than done, but if your platform has users in a country where an election’s happening, it will play a role in the election. That means you need to discuss at least your strategy - even if that strategy is doing nothing (though I don’t recommend that.) Even if you are a platform you think doesn’t touch politics, it could. Running away from politics is not the answer. Having a strategy is. Bring up the conversation and make a plan to bring it to your bosses. When I first got the international elections job at Facebook, it wasn’t because someone asked me to do it, I pitched them on the role and need.

2. Whose job is it? - Reasonable people can disagree on this point, but I think it’s important that someone be designated as the person who needs to wake up every day thinking about this. They need to pull people together to drive the ball forward. They know they are on the hook, even if it’s just one-half or one-quarter of the time. If you spread responsibility across many teams/people, no one is in charge, and things can fall by the wayside.

3. Risk Assessment - How might your platform be used for political purposes? How is your platform being used now in countries going to elections? What are the risks of violence, foreign interference, etc.? Resources to get some of this data are in the deck, but Freedom House and V-Dem are two places to start.

4. Prioritize - This is an unpopular truth to say out loud, but you can’t do everything everywhere, especially not in a year like this one. Tough prioritizations about what can be done and where will have to be made. It is best to be strategic about where to put your resources.

5. Review your policies - Are you going to allow political ads? If so, will you provide transparency dashboards? Do you have policies on voter suppression, election misinformation, etc.? Do you need them? Will you handle politicians differently than others on your platform? Your risk assessment should help you to identify where you need election-specific policies.

6. Can you enforce those policies? - Recently, the Washington Post wrote a story about how ChatGPT will write political messages tailored to specific groups even though that’s against their policies. What we don’t talk enough about is how platforms have some policies they can only enforce reactively versus proactively. Know that reporters, academics, outside groups, and others will stress test your policies as soon as you make them public. So, make sure you go in eyes wide open of what your enforcement mechanisms are.

7. Can you build protections into your product? - It’s not enough to have policies and enforcement. You need product buy-in as well. That could be to proactively find potentially violating content, building Election Day reminders, ad transparency tools, or ways to flag mis- or disinformation.

8. Authoritative Information - Will you help people with the process of voting by reminding them to register when Election Day is and who is on their ballot? This can be a lightweight way to make a difference, and numerous entities exist to help you get that information (the deck points to some of those.)

9. How will you engage with political entities? - There’s a decent chance some political actor is already using your platform. The questions you need to ask are if you are going to provide any sort of support for them on how to use your platform, if they can use all of the tools you provide, how you will handle their content in the algorithm, will you prioritize reviewing any potential violating content and do you have a process by which you might ban a political figure from your platform? Also, when they come calling with complaints about what content you leave up or take down, who is going to handle that?

10. Decision-making matrix - If you only do one thing, make sure you know how you are going to escalate potential decisions on political content and behavior. Things can happen really fast, and fumbling around trying to figure out who needs to be in the room, what to do, etc., is not helpful in the heat of the moment. Plan it out now so you can make things a little smoother.

There’s a lot more that can go into this, but this is a start. I can’t stress it enough that everyone really needs to start preparing now. Election activity on platforms starts well ahead of Election Day - when I was at Facebook, we’d start preparing a year and a half to two years out. So, if you are starting now, you are behind, but there’s always time to do something. At bare minimum, talk about it so you are strategic in how you approach the biggest year of elections we’ll have ever seen.

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. I’m just short of 200 paid subscribers, and your support can help me reach that milestone!