What I'm Reading - 10/29/2023

Mother Nature is playing around with us this weekend. If you look outside the window, it seems like a lovely Fall day, but step outside, and it’s in the low 80s! 

On Friday, I went on a date with myself to eat dinner and browse Barnes and Noble. My fall book collection is growing quite large 😆. I didn’t buy all of these last night (just two), but I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me. Let me know if you are reading any of these and want to discuss!

Finally, I am opening the Panic Responsibly sticker giveaway to all subscribers! I have about 35 free ones left. If you want one, put your details in this form. 

Newsletter of the week

I totally forgot to do a newsletter of the week last week - oops - but I’ll do two this week to make up for it.

First up is

Big Technology

by

Alex Kantrowitz

. Recently, Alex announced new features, including paid subscriber benefits and enhanced coverage, including The Panel, Big Tech War Stories podcast, and a new Amazon column by Kristi Coulter. Alex is one of the pioneers of going independent as a journalist and has been a big help to me as well. I highly recommend you check him out.

The second is that

Substack

has launched its own account called

Substack Politics

to help all of us stay on top of political content on the platform in the lead-up to the elections next year.

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. 

What I’m Reading

1. Entertainment Weekly: The Simpsons will parody Silicon Valley with new star-studded episode 

2. DFR Lab: As Israel and Hamas go to war, the Digital Services Act faces its first major test

3. Wired: The Hamas Threat of Hostage Execution Videos Looms Large Over Social Media 

4. Wall Street Journal: Inside Meta, Debate Over What’s Fair in Suppressing Comments in the Palestinian Territories 

5. NBC News: 7 influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X, researchers find

6. Washington Post: Spy vs. spy: How Israelis tried to stop Russia's information war in Africa 

7. New York Times: Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry

8. Wall Street Journal: Meta’s Threads Draws Power Users Seeking Alternative to Elon Musk’s X

9. Pew Internet: Americans are following the news less closely than they used to  

10. Washington Post: The bipartisan fear that American democracy is on the brink 

11. PRRI: Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election

12. Full Disclosure: Can we protect elections from artificial intelligence?

13. Change Research: Young Voters Media Consumption & Political Engagement 

14. Oxford: Social media discourse of engaged partisans is toxic even when politics are irrelevant 

15. Bloomberg: Prepare for a wave of US politicians to use AI in their campaigns 

16. Bloomberg: Bud Light, Target Boycotts Show How Culture Wars Came to Retail After 2020

17. Daily Beast: Google Red-Flagged Kentucky AG's Taxpayer-Funded Ads 

18. Bloomberg Law: AI-Made Deepfake Political Ads Targeted by Michigan Lawmakers

19. The Lawfare Podcast: The Crisis Facing Efforts to Counter Election Disinformation 

20. Gallup: Media Confidence in U.S. Matches 2016 Record Low 

21. Politico: Conservatives are increasingly knives out for the nation’s top cyber agency 

22. Campaigns & Elections: A Test Run for AI Voiceover 

23. USAFacts: USAFacts presents its first-ever policy recommendations to Congress to enhance public data infrastructure 

24. New York Times: The Chief Ideologist of the Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas 

25. New York Times: The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X 

26. CNBC: ‘Grandpa Google’: Search head testifies that young users see it as out of style

27. Washington Post: Millions work as content creators. In official records, they barely exist. 

28. The Verge: POSSE: a better way to post on social networks

29. The Conversation: Let the community work it out: Throwback to early internet days could fix social media's crisis of legitimacy 

30. TechCrunch: Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down 

31. New York Times: India Is Devouring Its Best and Brightest 

32. Fact Check: AI-generated video of Zambian president misleads about 2026 election plans

33. United Nations: AI Advisory Body

34. Trust Lab: The Differences Between the Online Safety Bill & the Digital Services Act 

35. Euractive: Germany eyes new digital strategy amid global tech race

36. New York Times: 5 Takeaways From Argentina’s Election 

37. Foreign Affairs: Jake Sullivan: The Sources of American Power 

38. Council on Foreign Relations: The Importance of the Internet Governance Forum

39. CBC: China linked to propaganda campaign targeting Trudeau, Poilievre, says Global Affairs

40. Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD): Capitalizing on Crisis: Russia, China and Iran use X to Exploit Israel-Hammas Information Chaos

41. National Democratic Institute: Digital Responses to Crises: An Action Plan for Platforms and CSOs Confronting Online Threats 

42. Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft (AHG) and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (AoD): A new Democracy by Design toolkit.

43. At Scale Conferences: Making Threads for iOS

44. Meta Oversight Board: Oversight Board announces Greek 2023 Elections Campaign cases

45. Meta Oversight Board: Q2 2023 Transparency Report: Board’s Recommendations Lead to Key Changes in Meta’s Cross-Check Program 

46. OpenAI: Frontier risk and preparedness 

47. Anthropic: Collective Constitutional AI: Aligning a Language Model with Public Input 

48. TikTok: Digital Services Act update: Bringing additional transparency to content moderation in Europe

49. X: X’s community-led approach: tackling inaccurate & misleading information 

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.