September 3, 2021

Washington Post: Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election, study says

Washington Post: Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election, study says. “A new study of user behavior on Facebook around the 2020 election is likely to bolster critics’ long-standing arguments that the company’s algorithms fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources. The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization.”

Research & Opinion 0
August 23, 2021

NBC: Delivery of full Arizona ‘audit’ report delayed after Cyber Ninjas test positive for Covid

NBC News: Delivery of full Arizona ‘audit’ report delayed after Cyber Ninjas test positive for Covid. “Arizona Republicans will only receive a partial draft of findings from their partisan review of 2020 ballots on Monday after three people from the private company leading the so-called audit tested positive for Covid, state Senate President Karen Fann said in a statement.”

COVID-19 0
August 20, 2021

Appeals court: Senate, Cyber Ninjas must produce ‘audit’ records immediately (Arizona Mirror)

Arizona Mirror: Appeals court: Senate, Cyber Ninjas must produce ‘audit’ records immediately. “The state Senate can’t duck Arizona’s public records law because some records were created by and are in possession of Cyber Ninjas, the company that GOP legislative leaders hired to conduct a so-called ‘audit’ of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. That means the Senate must immediately turn over a bevy of documents requested by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog organization.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
August 13, 2021

CNN: Social media and messaging apps appear to be shutdown in Zambia on election day, Facebook says

CNN: Social media and messaging apps appear to be shutdown in Zambia on election day, Facebook says. “Social media and messaging apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter, appeared to be shutdown in Zambia on Thursday as the country voted in presidential and parliamentary elections, according to a Facebook spokesperson.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
July 30, 2021

University of Arkansas: Study Explains Lax Oversight in Facebook Ads During 2016 Election

University of Arkansas: Study Explains Lax Oversight in Facebook Ads During 2016 Election. “U of A English professor Adam Pope and his colleague at San Jose State University examined lax oversight of advertising on Facebook during the 2016 political campaign and found a systematic bias toward ad buyers, specifically a Russian internet troll farm that sought to sow discord within the U.S. political system.”

Research & Opinion 0
July 9, 2021

Florida Chamber of Commerce: Florida Institute for Political Leadership Launches First of its Kind Statewide Database of Upcoming Elections

Florida Chamber of Commerce: Florida Institute for Political Leadership Launches First of its Kind Statewide Database of Upcoming Elections. “The tool, a first ever in Florida and offered exclusively by FIPL, allows users to see what elections are upcoming in their local area – from municipal-level government to state and federal elected positions. Users can filter results, narrowing down respective searches by county, category, next election year and type of elected office. Fipl.org/elections also provides contact information for state and county elections officials.”

New Resources 0
July 1, 2021

AZ Central: Republic takes Senate, Cyber Ninjas to court for audit records

AZ Central: Republic takes Senate, Cyber Ninjas to court for audit records. “The Arizona Republic has gone to court to demand records from the state Senate and one of its contractors to shed light on the audit of 2020 election results. The news organization on Wednesday filed a special action in Maricopa County Superior Court seeking financial records and communications about the audit from the Senate and Cyber Ninjas, the contractor it hired to lead the work.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
June 27, 2021

Frustration and bewilderment: Emails show tension between Facebook and Biden campaign (CNN)

CNN: Frustration and bewilderment: Emails show tension between Facebook and Biden campaign. “People working with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign repeatedly warned Facebook about violent campaign-related rhetoric on its platform during the heat of the 2020 election, but a series of email exchanges reveals how the social media giant sometimes brushed them off.

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
June 11, 2021

Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats (The Guardian)

The Guardian: Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats. “In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates. Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
May 26, 2021

ITWeb: Google vows to combat data manipulation during SA elections

ITWeb: Google vows to combat data manipulation during SA elections. “Google has vowed to Parliament that it will protect the integrity of SA’s upcoming elections, saying it will not allow any manipulative agenda on its platforms. Google along with tech firms Twitter and Facebook were invited by the South African Parliament’s Committee of Communications and Digital Technologies yesterday to respond to questions about misinformation on their platforms.

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
May 10, 2021

Mother Jones: Researchers Say They’ve Uncovered a Massive Facebook Bot Farm from the 2020 Election

Mother Jones: Researchers Say They’ve Uncovered a Massive Facebook Bot Farm from the 2020 Election. “A group of security researchers say they’ve unmasked a massive bot farm that aimed to shape public opinion on Facebook during the heat of the 2020 presidential election. According to Paul Bischoff of Comparitech, a British cybersecurity company, the network includes 13,775 unique Facebook accounts that each posted roughly 15 times per month, for an output of more than 50,000 posts a week.”

Research & Opinion 0
April 26, 2021

Albania: Alarm Over Indications Of Personal Data Breach, Election Campaign Violations (Transparency International)

Transparency International: Albania: Alarm Over Indications Of Personal Data Breach, Election Campaign Violations. “On 11 April, an Albanian media portal published a database containing personal data and private information of 910,000 individuals, allegedly maintained by the country’s ruling Socialist Party. It was revealed – and since then confirmed – that ‘patrons’ were assigned to voters who tracked their political preferences. Additional comments, recorded by the patrons, reportedly detail their interactions with citizens, with some instances amounting to possible voter intimidation.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 8, 2021

#Election2020: the first public Twitter dataset on the 2020 US Presidential election (PubMed)

PubMed: #Election2020: the first public Twitter dataset on the 2020 US Presidential election. “The study of online chatter is paramount, especially in the wake of important voting events like the recent November 3, 2020 U.S. Presidential election and the inauguration on January 21, 2021. Limited access to social media data is often the primary obstacle that limits our abilities to study and understand online political discourse. To mitigate this impediment and empower the Computational Social Science research community, we are publicly releasing a massive-scale, longitudinal dataset of U.S. politics- and election-related tweets. This multilingual dataset encompasses over 1.2 billion tweets and tracks all salient U.S. political trends, actors, and events from 2019 to the time of this writing.”

New Resources 0

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