LTO Links #307

Google Gets Pushback From Left On Spam Bias Fix

Learn. Test. Optimize.

Issue #307 |

Campaigns

Mike Pence’s 2024 digital operation kicks into gear

"Advancing American Freedom, an outside spending entity controlled by Pence and widely considered to be his 2024 presidential campaign in waiting, has spent nearly $100,000 on Facebook and Google ads in 2022. More than half of that has been spent in the past month, according to the platforms’ political ad archives."

Data

Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences

"By analyzing billions of browsing and viewing events between 2016 and 2019, with a novel framework for measuring partisan audiences, we first estimate that 17% of Americans are partisan-segregated through television versus roughly 4% online...Last, partisan news channels’ audiences are growing even as the TV news audience is shrinking. Our results suggest that television is the top driver of partisan audience segregation among Americans."

Email

Google Is Going to Let Politicians Spam Your Inbox

"In a filing to the Federal Election Commission, the company proposed suspending Gmail spam filters on messages from political parties and candidates as part of a plan to “enhance user and bulk sender experience.” This pilot program, to be rolled out during the upcoming election cycle, will still allow Gmail users to manually unsubscribe from each unwanted email list. (How generous.) They’ll have to do it, however, by clicking on one thirsty form letter at a time."

Hate political email spam? You have little time to express your feelings on a potentially pivotal federal ruling.

"By Tuesday morning, several dozen people had written the FEC about Google's request, according to a list of comments released by the agency. Almost all of those issuing comments expressed displeasure, with many urging the FEC to reject the Google request."

International

Big Tech platforms could face new major EU limits on targeted political ads

"Lead MEP, Renew's Anna Donáth of Hungary, proposed to ban online platforms from displaying political ads based on people's profiling and tracking on the internet. Political parties could soon only target voters via online ads based on data they themselves choose to share, including their gender, age, location and language."

Social Media

Shadowbanning: Sorting Fact from Fiction

"However, in our interviews, we found that people use the word “shadowban” to describe other methods of undisclosed content moderation, such as not having posts appear under certain hashtags, hiding a user’s handle from a search suggestion box, or downranking a user’s content in a recommendation algorithm. In our report, we suggest that shadowbanning has come to mean any time a social media platform hides or reduces the visibility of a user’s content without informing them."

Twitchy and Epoch Times Lead All Conservative Websites in May Audience Growth

"Parler’s audience continued to decline as its YOY unique visitors sagged in May with 543,000 unique visitors compared to two million in May 2021. Here are the May 2022 unique visitors for the four conservative-friendly social media platforms TheRighting follows:

  • Rumble (8,585,000; +1% vs year ago)

  • MeWe (934,00; -60% vs year ago)

  • Gettr (807,000; year-ago data NA)

  • Parler (543,000; -74% vs year ago)"

Technology

Biden: Did you get my text? President gives out his Community ‘phone number.’

"Political campaigns often use text messages to disseminate information — including Biden through the Democratic National Committee — but aides say this is the first time in nearly a decade the White House has “opened a new communication channel to/from the public.”"