What I’m Reading - 2/4/24
I chat with Latika Bourke about Facebook’s 20th birthday, the changes we’ve seen in how technology has impacted politics and where it might go
I feel like I saw the future this week.
It’s my first of four weeks in San Francisco as I continue to get ramped up with Duco. I haven’t been this busy since my Facebook days, and my mind is reeling from all of the fascinating conversations that I’ve had. I’m also obsessed with the possibilities after seeing the Wall Street Journal’s review of the Apple Vision Pro, and I rode in more driverless vehicles.
I’m particularly struck by some conversations I had about building large language models and what that will mean, not just for content moderation but for the trust and safety industry as a whole. Definitely, more to come on that as I process all of this more. If you want a preview, I recommend you read this piece by Samidh Chakrabarti and Dave Willner about LLMs for content moderation. These two are some of the smartest and most thoughtful people in this space, and I’m thrilled they are teaming up for this work.
The future is influenced by the past, though, and I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking about how much has changed in the last twenty years, as today is Facebook’s 20th anniversary. It arrives as the company had another rollercoaster of a week from Mark apologizing to parents at a Senate hearing to record stock growth following their earnings call. I swear this company can’t do anything without drama. It holds the record for the highest growth in a day and the biggest loss.
To look back on those 20 years and where we might go from here, I reconnected with Latika Bourke. Latika and I first met in Sydney about ten years ago when she was a reporter in the Australian capital city of Canberra. Then, we talked about all of the positive ways politicians and governments could use a platform like Facebook to connect with constituents.
Now, Latika has also started her own Substack,
, and together, we’re publishing our interview. You can read the transcript here, and I’ve published the audio as a special episode of Impossible Tradeoffs.Finally, my heart is also extremely full after this week. So many of you have mentioned how much you love the newsletter or how a conversation we had helped you somehow. It means so much. Thank you.
Myself and Latika Bourke.
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What I’m Reading
NOTE: I had ChatGPT help me to organize these by topics. It’s something new I’m trying.
Artificial Intelligence and Tech Policy:
PoliticoEU: EU countries strike deal on landmark AI rulebook
Washington Post: 'Microsoft is back.' How AI put the five-decade-old tech giant on top again.
Microsoft: Governing AI in Africa: Policy frameworks for a new frontier
TechCrunch: OpenAI partners with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines
Aspen Institute: Preparing for the AI Election Impact
Semafor: Meta is bucking just about every AI trend, including the ‘boys club’
The Atlantic: AI in Politics Is So Much Bigger Than Deepfakes
Content Moderation and Social Media:
Bloomberg: Musk’s X Pledges 100-Person Office in Texas to Police Content
Mozilla Foundation: European Policymakers Are Right to be Concerned About The State of X's Transparency
Center for Democracy and Technology: Investigating Content Moderation Systems in the Global South
Euractiv: Germany set to miss implementation deadline of EU’s content moderation rulebook
Wired: Hate Speech Proliferates on YouTube in India, Research Finds
Wired: A Startup Allegedly ‘Hacked the World.’ Then Came the Censorship—and Now the Backlash
Techdirt: Sorry Appin, We’re Not Taking Down Our Article About Your Attempts To Silence Reporters
Politics, Elections, and Democracy:
Wired: ‘Over Time the Trust Will Come’: An Exclusive Interview With TikTok’s CEO
Economist: As Facebook turns 20, politics is out; impersonal video feeds are in
danah boyd: KOSA isn't designed to help kids.
Tech Policy Press: The Gaps Left Unfilled by the Senate Tech CEO Hearing on Child Safety
Kettering Foundation: Social Bots and the Frightening Unknowability of Social Media
Lori Brewer Collins: Mindy Finn - On Bridging the Political Divide for the Sake of Democracy
The Atlantic: The Rise of Techno-authoritarianism
Axios: Behind the Curtain: A new, powerful political movement
Politico: A laser eye on Silicon Valley’s weird new politics
Politico: Opinion | I’m an Election Law Expert. Here’s What I Fear Most in 2024.
The Conversation: Disinformation is often blamed for swaying elections – the research says something else
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Countering Disinformation Effectively: An Evidence-Based Policy Guide
UK Joint Committee on National Security Strategy: Launches inquiry into ‘Defending Democracy’ to better understand how threats to the UK’s democracy may evolve and be addressed
Kyiv Independent: Social media giants’ unbalanced fight with disinformation in Ukraine
Social Media Matters Podcast: Navigating the Truth: Unveiling the Impact of Misinformation on India's First-Time Voters
Time: Indian Opposition Leader Hemant Soren Arrested Months Before Elections
Joyojeet Pal: Influencer collaboration on YouTube: Changing political outreach in the 2024 Indian Elections
International IDEA: Protecting Democratic Elections through Safeguarding Information Integrity: Policy Brief Launch
Forum on Information & Democracy: Tech firms, governments urged to combat digital election threats
EPJ Data Science: Account credibility inference based on news-sharing networks
All Tech is Human: Global Majority Spotlight: Elections
Center for Open Science: Meta Partners with the Center for Open Science to Share Data to Study Well-being Topics
Rainey Center: Policy Brief: Ensuring Candidate Safety: Examining the Need for Legislation to Protect Elected Officials and Campaign Workers
Chronicle of Philanthropy: A Plea From Progressive Foundation CEOs: Make Election Grants Now
Miscellaneous:
Nieman Reports: News Organizations Are Leaving Twitter. What About You?
Pew Research Center: Americans’ Social Media Use
- : Davos: high altitude, low impact - The World Economic Forum has become less about finding real solutions and more about being seen to be finding them
Wired: Hulu Shows Jarring Anti-Hamas Ad Likely Generated With AI
Fortune: Gen Alpha and Gen Z video gamers face a new threat that their parents didn’t: Other players
New York Times: Minute-Long Soap Operas Are Here. Is America Ready?
Colm Doyle: Performance Reviews - they're all about the story
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.