LTO Links #293

Political Bias Found In Email Spam Filtering Algorithms

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Issue #293 |

Advertising

China dominates early midterm ads

"A cursory search this week revealed at least 77 Republican politicians and outside groups running Facebook ads mentioning China in just the last month alone."

Digital Consultants Should Brace for Major Changes to Ad Targeting

"To help mitigate the challenge that could come with potential targeting changes, Harbath encouraged practitioners to engage meaningfully and as often as possible with the platform companies that are still accepting political advertising. She noted that in 2019, she was able to take consultants’ hardship stories (how an under-funded candidate might have lost, for instance) to Facebook executives, who subsequently made the decision to keep accepting political ad dollars."

Campaigns

Reaching Voters With Trusted Messengers

"In this report, we highlight three recent innovations in voter contact that are shown to have significant effects on both persuasion and turnout. Relational organizing, vote tripling, and deep canvassing are becoming reliable tactics for Democratic campaigns and liberal issue advocacy groups. Republicans and their conservative allies, however, have been slower to adopt these innovations due to relevant cultural differences."

Ron Paul’s Revenge

"They became evangelists of a new kind of computer software that mimicked Paul’s beloved gold and was inspired by the same economic theories that informed his activism. Over the past decade, Paul’s acolytes — including the cofounder of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency and an aide to the Senate’s top Bitcoin advocate — have gone on to win far more victories with computer code than they ever had at the ballot box."

Data

What If Fox News Viewers Watched CNN Instead?

"Switchers were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long Covid, for example, and six points more likely to believe that many foreign countries did a better job than the U.S. of controlling the virus. They were seven points more likely to support voting by mail. And they were 10 points less likely to believe that supporters of then-candidate Joe Biden were happy when police officers get shot, 11 points less likely to say it’s more important for the president to focus on containing violent protesters than on the coronavirus, and 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, 'we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.'"

Disinformation

Facebook’s most popular posts show how it’s vulnerable to exploitation, report finds

"The report by the Integrity Institute — a new nonprofit made up of tech industry veterans — found that Facebook’s lists of its popular content in 2021 were dominated either by posts from anonymous or spammy sources or that contained unoriginal material."

  • A Facebook Bug Led To Increased Views Of Harmful Content Over Six Months (TheVerge.com)

Email

Research: Anti-Spam Algorithms Showed Political Bias During 2020 USA Elections

"According to a new study, the spam filtering algorithms (SFAs) from three of the world’s largest major email providers exhibited political bias during the United States’ 2020 elections, with Google’s Gmail skewing to the left, and Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo Mail favoring emails from right-wing candidates."

Fundraising

ActBlue Under Pressure To Boot Warnock After Ex-Wife Accused Him of Violating Custody Agreement

"Citing Free Beacon reporting, the Republican National Committee called on ActBlue to follow its precedent of kicking off Democrats accused of misconduct toward women or minors and remove Warnock. His ex-wife's latest custody claims come two years after she accused him of running over her foot with his car during a disagreement, which Warnock denied."

Social Media

Conservative influencers aren’t sold on Trump’s social media platform and other alternative apps

"That buzz was tempered by influencers who said while they do use these platforms, they don’t see them as a replacement for the wide reach of the mainstream options. Many of them used the phrase “echo chamber” when discussing their concerns about the platforms."

TikTok Gets Political & Launches 2022 Australian Federal Election Guide

"For starters, the social media giant aims to encourage the 600,000 un-enrolled Aussies to participate in the nation’s largest democratic process. TikTok users who visit the Election Guide will be directed to the AEC’s website, where they can enrol, or view their enrolment status."

Technology

Two key tech execs quit Truth Social after troubled app launch

"Josh Adams and Billy Boozer - the company’s chiefs of technology and product development - joined the venture last year and quickly became central players in its bid to build a social-media empire, backed by Trump’s powerful brand, to counter what many conservatives deride as 'cancel culture' censorship from the left."

  • Truth Social misses another deadline as users report waitlist issues (Axios.com)