What I’m Reading - July 30, 2023

Twenty-eight stories that sum up a very busy week

Wowza - was it a busy week. This is the first week I’m trying my new schedule, where I break out my longer form analysis, the calendar, and what I’m reading sections of my newsletter. 

This brings some challenges - especially during a week like this - where I want to share many stories. I’ve got twenty-eight (!) for you that span elections, politics, tech, and lifestyle topics.

Let me know how you liked this new format. Is this too many stories for one newsletter? I could do two installments of my favorite links - move the calendar to Tuesdays and do links on Sundays and Thursdays.  Feel free to reply and let me know your thoughts or vote in the poll below.

✨ Must Reads

1. Left, Right & Center Podcast - McCarthy's on the Hunt(er)
   I join David Green, Mo Elleithee, and Sarah Isgur to discuss Zuckerberg narrowly avoiding a censure vote in Congress this week.

2. Lawfare - Content Moderation's Legalism Problem
   A must-read from Yoel Roth about the deliberations that happen inside tech companies on tricky content moderation decisions and the need for a public editor to help build transparency and trust into those.

3. New York Times - An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology
   I’m a huge fan of Mike Masnick and his writing at TechDirt. I’m glad its getting more exposure with this profile in the New York Times.

🇺🇲 Election News

4. FWIW News - Trump Shuns Social Media
   Kyle makes a great point about Donald Trump's limited social media presence  - "It’s one of the most remarkable dynamics at play in this early stage of the 2024 election that has gone unmentioned in most political reporting to date."

5. Axios - Microsoft and Xandr Political Ads Ban
   DSPolitical - DSPolitical Responds to Microsoft Political Ad Ban
   This isn’t surprising given Microsoft bans political ads on its other platforms, such as Bing and LinkedIn, but I do wonder if the pressure will build next year for platforms to open up to candidates.

6. Politico - Candidates' Grassroots Money
   Small dollars are drying up online, and campaigns must look to new places to raise money.

7. Pew Research - Most Americans Favor Online Restrictions
   Big gap, though, between Republicans and Democrats - not surprisingly. Republicans have stayed pretty consistent, but in recent years Democrats have become more in favor of government interventions for false content.

8. NPR - Meta's Threads Needs Policy for Election Disinformation
   While I agree, I also am guessing that Meta’s policies in this area for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp will apply here, too - though they haven’t been clear on if they will or will not be demoting political content as they do on Facebook. They’ve just said they won’t focus on politics. Meanwhile, Clegg was recorded this week on how Meta is getting better at fighting election misinformation.

9. The Washington Post - Biden Campaign Data Hires
   Bracing for a hard-fought race, Biden’s team elevates two campaign veterans as it seeks to pinpoint who to reach — and how

10. OpenAI Careers - Elections Lead Public Policy
    Cool job alert! I love that OpenAI is hiring for someone in this area … of course, I am biased.

11. Associated Press - Election disinformation campaigns targeted voters of color in 2020. Experts expect 2024 to be worse

🌍 Around the World

12. Meta - Meta and India AI Foster Advancements in AI Technologies in India
    My regular reminder that we need to be paying more attention to what is happening in India.

13. The Wall Street Journal - Meta's Threads Doesn't Label Propaganda Accounts from Russia, China State Media
    While not great, can we stop expecting new products to have every trust and safety measure built before launch? If we required that, it would be too expensive for anyone to try anything new.

14. Surfshark - Internet Shutdowns Half-Year Recap 2023
    Key patterns, incidents, and the complex interplay between political events and digital suppression in regards to internet shutdowns the first half of 2023.

15. Time - India AI Startup Karya
    The Workers Behind AI Rarely See Its Rewards. This Indian Startup Wants to Fix That

16. Latin America Daily Briefing - Intl Concern Over Guatemala's Election
    Guatemala returns to the polls on August 20th for their runoff, and things are getting tricky. This week the U.S. warned Guatemalan officials about the need to hold a free and fair election.

17. Overture Maps - Overture Maps Foundation Releases World-Wide Open Map Dataset
    I love map graphics. This seems to help making those easier.

18. Platformer - The Democracies Turning Against Online
    Casey looks at some troubling remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron and the EU’s Trenton about shutting down the internet in certain crisis situations.

19. Regulate Tech - Online Safety Bill: Some Futures
    My former Facebook colleague - Richard Allan - a once long-time Vice President on the Public Policy team and member of the U.K. House of Lords, speculates what the future looks like once the U.K. Online Safety bill passes.

20. Euractiv - Europe Enters Patchy Road to Audit Online Platforms' Algorithms
    Many questions remain on how the Digital Services Act will be enacted - including how regulators will audit platform algorithms.

💡 Think Tanks and Industry

21. Integrity Institute - Shining a Light on Platform Transparency Best Practices
    As a wave of new regulations and legislative proposals around transparency from social media platforms are being written worldwide, the Integrity Institute is releasing a new resource to provide a high-level overview of what platform transparency could look like and what it could accomplish.

22. Bipartisan Policy Center - Visualize the Federal Role in Elections
    This is a really cool graphic from my colleagues at BPC about the complicated role of the federal government in U.S. elections.

23. Washington Post - Move fast and beat Musk: The inside story of how Meta built Threads
    This a good insight into just how fast teams within Meta can move to build things and the pressure Zuck can put them under.
    Anthropic - Frontier Threats: Red Teaming for AI Safety
    Anthropic shares their approach to “frontier threats red teaming,” including high-level findings from a project they conducted on biological risks as a test project, lessons learned, and their future plans in this area.

24. Microsoft - The next frontier in elections: Microsoft supports the Council of State Governments’ Election Technology Initiative
    Microsoft’s Election Guard technology is evolving to be shepherded by the Council of State Governments and The Turnout to help ensure the safety of election processes.

25. Axios - Spotify Q2 Earnings & New Active Users
    We’re not paying enough attention to audio streaming and its impact on political discourse. Spotify may have cut its podcast division, but video podcasts are growing, and an overall growing userbase means more listeners for what is out there.

🔐 Trust and Safety

26. Techdirt - Trust, Safety, and Communication
    Great post from Mike about “how communications itself is a strategic trust & safety tool, though rarely considered as such.”

27. Tech Policy Press - The Evolving Trust and Safety Vendor Ecosystem
    The T&S vendor ecosystem has exploded in the last year or two. This is a good primer.

☕ Lifestyle

28. Emily McDowell - What Wants to Die
    I think a lot about how I want my life to transform, evolve and grow. Emily’s essays have been helpful to me, and I like this one looking at what things in our lives want to die.