Washington Post: Google searches are not a great indicator of electoral success. “This is the era of having more data at our disposal than we know what to do with. And so it is that I came to wonder: Do Google searches correlate well to election results?”
Bloomberg: Brazil’s loudest election deniers are kicked off social media. “Even as Jair Bolsonaro begins to give up power, his staunchest supporters refuse to accept defeat in Brazil’s presidential election, crying foul on the Internet and in the streets. For nearly two weeks they’ve protested President-elect Luiz Inacio da Silva’s Oct. 30 victory, rallying around unproven claims of fraud. And the most social-media savvy are blasting conspiracies about vote rigging to millions of followers. Electoral authorities are hitting back.”
New York Times: Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms. “The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka — have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today. It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort.”
CNET: Tuesday Will Bring a ‘Blood Moon’ Total Lunar Eclipse: How to See It. “A ‘blood moon’ total lunar eclipse will be visible in the US on Election Day this Tuesday. It’s difficult to tell at this point whether that’s a foreboding omen or a sign of providence.”
CNN: Elon Musk delays $8 ‘blue check’ Twitter verification plan until after the midterms. “Twitter is delaying the rollout of account verifications for its paid Twitter Blue subscription plan until after the midterm elections, a source with knowledge of the decision confirmed to CNN.”
CNET: Swamped With Election Campaign Text Messages? Here’s How to Stop Them. “According to robocall blocking software company RoboKiller, Americans received 1.3 billion political campaign phone and text messages in October 2022. Fortunately, there’s a solution for the political ads bombarding your Facebook feed, mailbox or text message inbox.”
Bloomberg: Candidates Keep Pushing Election Denial Online — Because It Works. “Candidates who have pushed the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen routinely saw their posts collecting more engagement overall compared to the performance of each candidate’s average post, Bloomberg found. The review covered the Facebook and Twitter posts of every Republican running for Senate, Congress, governor, attorney general or secretary of state this year.”
Washington Post: You can now track your ballot online in half of states. This is a “Gift Article” and you should be able to read it without paywall for the next week. “Want to make sure your vote counts in these high-stakes midterm elections? Track your ballot online like a UPS delivery. The technology to do that is now available to more than a quarter of all Americans, in part because of investments made for mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.”
Ars Technica: Twitter restricts staff from policing content violations ahead of US midterms. “According to Bloomberg News, Twitter has significantly cut back on its content moderation staff approved to access a dashboard that logs automated and user-flagged content that requires human review before content is restricted. Ordinarily, hundreds of employees would be using the dashboard, reviewing content to manually enforce actions dictated by Twitter policy, such as banning or restricting accounts. Since last week, two Twitter safety team insiders told Bloomberg that the total number had been reduced to about 15 employees.”
Washington Post: As midterms loom, TikTok faces its next political test. “Three years ago, TikTok imposed strict rules prohibiting campaign advertising as the video-sharing app tried to avoid the scandals over political content that have long dogged its social media rivals. But with Election Day fast approaching, TikTok can’t manage to stay on the sidelines.”
CNET: Election Misinformation Is Thriving — When It’s In Spanish. “Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit watchdog group, released a report earlier this month pointing out that dozens of videos filled with election misinformation, with more than a million views total, are still on YouTube since being posted in 2020. This is the third report released by Media Matters in three months focusing on Spanish-language videos and channels making debunked claims but facing minimal repercussions from YouTube.”
NPR: False information is everywhere. ‘Pre-bunking’ tries to head it off early. “Officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Union County, North Carolina, and Contra Costa County, California, are posting infographics on social media urging people to ‘think critically’ about what they see and share about voting and to seek out reliable election information.”
New York Times: Why Am I Seeing That Political Ad? Check Your ‘Trump Resistance’ Score.. “In the run-up to the midterm elections next month, campaigns are tapping a host of different scores and using them to create castes of their most desirable voters. There are ‘gun owner,’ ‘pro-choice’ and ‘Trump 2024’ scores, which cover everyday politics. There are also voter rankings on hot-button issues — a ‘racial resentment’ score, for example, and a ‘trans athletes should not participate’ score. There’s even a ‘U.F.O.s distrust government’ score.” The link to the article is a “Gift Article” URL I generated, so you should be able to see it even if you normally hit a paywall.
New York Times: TikTok failed to stop most misleading political ads in a test run by researchers.. “TikTok failed to catch 90 percent of ads featuring false and misleading messages about elections, while YouTube and Facebook identified and blocked most of them, according to an experiment run by misinformation researchers, the results of which were released on Friday.”
ABC News: Google sees less Chinese and Iranian hacking this election cycle, they say. “Just weeks away from the 2022 midterm elections, a senior Google official said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen the same style of hacking from groups backed by the governments of China and Iran as during the 2020 election.”
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