What I'm Reading - 11/3/24

I haven’t fully wrapped my head around Tuesday being Election Day here in the United States. It’s a nail-biter. Last week, I started my tradition of watching West Wing from the very beginning at night to avoid having cable news on 24/7.

I embarked on another one of my election-time traditions/recommendations to folks: booking something to look forward to after this is all over.

Kate Hill

’s Relais de Camont in southern France has been on my mind for well over a year. I felt strongly that I needed to go there for two weeks to write. I made that a reality this past week by booking two weeks in February to work on the book and probably a few other creative projects. I mean, look how beautiful this is.

Her substack,

The Camont Journals with Kate Hill

, is one of my must-reads. It’s a lovely escape to cooking in France.

One last thing before I let you get on with your weekend. This is just a heads-up that I’m unsure yet what this week’s Wednesday newsletter or Thursday’s podcast will look like. I’m going to play it by ear, depending on how Tuesday goes. We do have a new podcast on Monday with Maria Giannopolis about her time at Google and running digital at the Republican National Convention.

Have a great Sunday!

What I’m Reading

AI Developments

1. SageJournals: What is civic participation in artificial intelligence? 

Stories About Specific Countries

1. The New York Times: Japan Election: Asia’s Most Stable Democracy Is Sent Into Chaos 

2. POLITICO: Massive hack-for-hire scandal rocks Italian political elites 

3. International Republican Institute: IRI Preliminary Statement on Georgia’s Parliamentary Elections 

4. Europe announced some new guidelines for researchers under the DSA and you can find a digitized version so that it's easier to annotate, tag, share, and collaborate. You can access the delegated regulation here, the DSA (art 40(12)) here, and a user guide here.

Political & Social Commentary

1. Persuasion: From Vibes to Votes - by Katie Harbath and Renee DiResta

2. Tech Policy Press: Are Platforms Prepared for the Post-Election Period?

3. Washington Post: Efforts to combat disinformation in retreat as voters head to the polls

4. The Atlantic: Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign

5. Microsoft On the Issues: Google’s Shadow Campaigns 

6. Bled Strategic Times: Strengthening Democracy in the Digital Age 

7. Pew Internet: Americans’ top sources of political news ahead of the 2024 election

8. Financial Times: Musk’s X to undershoot revenue goals from political advertising 

9. Business Insider: What These Founders Learned From Trying to Take on Elon Musk's Twitter 

10. POLITICO: Why Kamala Harris and Donald Trump Don’t Need to Worry About Deepfakes

11. The Wall Street Journal: Exclusive | X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not

12. The Washington Post: The new dark money: How influencers get paid big bucks to court your vote 

13. Bloomberg: How Elon Musk Came to Embrace Donald Trump: Citizen Elon Podcast 

14. Substack Reads by Hamish McKenzie: Jeff Bezos has a business problem

15. John O'Nolan: Democratising publishing 

16. CNN Politics: Election officials are outmatched by Elon Musk’s misinformation machine 

17. UserMag by Taylor Lorenz by Taylor Lorenz: Trump vs Kamala: Who's winning online? 

18. The Washington Post: In the podcast election, top shows cast doubt on integrity of 2024 vote 

19. The Washington Post: Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning 

20. Hootsuite: US presidential election statistics: 2024 social media data 

21. German Marshall Fund of the United States: TikTok Tactics: 2024 US Candidates Dance Around Security Risks

22. Bipartisan Policy Center: Where Voters Look for Information Ahead of the 2024 Election 

23. TIME: AI's Underwhelming Impact On the 2024 Elections 

24. Bing: Bing 2024 Elections Experience 

25. Harvard Data Science Review: Predicting the 2024 Presidential Election 

26. ProPublica: Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election 

27. The Nation: 25 Years of Indecision With Jon Stewart 

28. TechPolicy.Press: Seeing Rising Election Misinformation, Americans Say Social Media Platforms May Bear Responsibility for Political Violence 

29. The Wall Street Journal: I Replied ‘Stop’ to a Political Text Message. I Got 100 More. 

30. Deadline: Brian Williams’ Amazon Election Night Special Signals Streaming’s Emergence For Live News Moments: “It Might Be The Next Big Thing” 

31. Deadline: “Never Seen Anything Like It”: Networks Prepare For An Election Night Like No Other 

32. Council on Foreign Relations: Understanding the Threats to U.S. Election Security in 2024 

33. AAAS: Can people be ‘inoculated’ against misinformation? | Science 

Legal & Regulatory

1. Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives: The Weaponization of the Federal Trade Commission Part II: Harassment of Elon Musk 

2. Stanford Cyber Policy Center: Regulating Under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI

3. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency: CISA Releases Its First Ever International Strategic Plan 

4. NBC Los Angeles: How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's lobbying power tamed Washington 

Miscellaneous Insights & Reports

1. The Wall Street Journal: How Two Irreverent Historians Made Their Podcast a Global Sensation

2. Science Advances: Current engagement with unreliable sites from web search driven by navigational search 

Company Announcements

1. RightsCon session list is live: RightsCon 2025 Session List 

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