Archive: Year: 2014

It’s no secret that governments and political actors now make use of social robots or bots—automated scripts that produce content and mimic real users. Faux social media accounts now spread pro-governmental messages, beef up web site follower numbers, and causeartificial trends. Bot-generated propaganda and misdirection has become a worldwide political strategy. Robotic lobbying tactics have been deployed in several countries: Russia, Mexico, China, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Azerbaijan, Iran, Bahrain, South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. Indeed, experts estimate that bot traffic now makes up over60 percent of all traffic online—up nearly twenty percent from just two years ago. The ways politicos’ use social bots in efforts to sway public opinion are ever-evolving and...

Listicalization President Obama wrote a line of code at a Code.org event at the White House, and Zachary Seward covers the news for Quartz. With word circulating of police eavesdropping on civil rights protesters, the FCC has issued a warning reminding state and local government law enforcement agencies that jamming or interfering with cellular communications is illegal. "Although today's smartphones may enable persons to engage in communications that are bothersome to others, this does not provide the right for persons, or even for state or local agencies—including state and local law enforcement—to operate jammers. In fact, use of signal jammers by state or local authorities is generally prohibited," the FCC says. Emily Bell, the director of Columbia University's Tow Center, can't resist noting...

Frauds According to long-time conservative activist Brent Bozell, ForAmerica is "not a fake, make-believe army." As he tells Shane Goldmacher and Tim Alberta of National Journal, "this is 7 million people who are active in the political conversation, who are conservatives." But this "digital army" has been built, Goldmacher and Alberta report, "by the paid acquisition of its members through targeted advertising," raising the age-old question: is it for real? Nearly all of its $2.5 million in funding in 2013 came from a single donor. Related: MoveOn.org is spending $1 million to build a draft movement for Senator Elizabeth Warren in Iowa and New Hampshire, Jonathan Martin reports for the New York Times. It's not all that surprising that by the end of...

Platforms Here's a visualization of tweets using the hashtags #ICantBreathe, #BlackLivesMatter and #HandsUpDontShoot (color-coded) from November 24-December 5, worldwide. When #ICantBreathe explodes on December 4th you will be amazed. Kriston Capps maps out the "unprecedented scale" of the protests across America for CityLab. The teenage girls who make up the heart of the One Direction fanbase on Tumblr are all posting about race relations in America in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner non-indictments, writes digital strategy consultant Kaitlyn Dowling in an intriguing bit of zeitgeist-sniffing on Medium. Police in Chicago appear to be using sophisticated eavesdropping technology to monitor the cellphone conversations of people involved in the recent street protests, reports Mike Krauser for CBS Chicago. After reminding us of the...

Omens Another digital mogul with aspirations to remake journalism, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, is dealing with turmoil at The New Republic, the magazine he bought two years ago. His latest moves to turn it from a magazine into a "digital media company" by reducing the number of print editions and moving its staff to New York have triggered an apparent staff rebellion, led by the resignations of its editor Franklin Foer and longtime book editor Leon Weiseltier. As Dylan Byers reports for Politico, several more staff members "are now planning to show up at the magazine's offices on Friday and resign." According to Jonathan Chait, one of the many writers nurtured into prominence by TNR, is that Hughes and his handpicked...

Phubbing In the Intercept this morning, Ryan Gallagher details how the NSA's Aurora Gold program secretly spies on hundreds of companies and individuals globally in order to better hack into cellphone systems, and also secretly introduces flaws into communications systems to more easily tap them. "The operation appears aimed at ensuring virtually every cellphone network in the world is NSA accessible," he writes. In Vanity Fair, Sarah Ellison has an excellent and detailed report on the turmoil at Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media. She writes, referring to Omidyar and co-founder Glenn Greenwald: "Here’s the basic recipe: Combine two types of strong-willed visionary—one cool and analytical, the other fervent and outspoken. Add a dash of messianic outlook to the ingredients. Heat under pressure....

Joe Rospars recently wrote in Time about the perceived “creative crisis" in the Democratic Party, a debate about online fundraising, and the responsibility writers, digital directors, and even candidates have to the creative direction of a campaign. Joe's answer -- “Don’t be lame” -- is a great place to start. But it doesn’t answer the why: Unlike those TV ads, email is personal. We protect our inboxes fiercely. They hold our receipts, recipes, invitations, job applications unanswered, flirtations unsent. Not even our partners or friends get access. Unlike social networks that encourage us to put our stuff out there for the public not just to see but to evaluate, your inbox is private. We can't predict what Facebook will do with its...

Heavy Lifts Andrew Hyder of Hack Your City, Thomas Apodaca and the folks at MySociety have put the 4,799 page transcript of the Ferguson Grand Jury testimony into the SayIt transcript platform, making the text linkable and searchable. In the Washington Post's Monkey Cage political science blog, Dave Karpf explains why political emails don't stop after an election is over. In case you didn't already know why. While Uber has been in the news, its chief competitor Lyft has been quietly doing its own internal housekeeping to tighten up control over how much data its employees can access on users and drivers, reports Charlie Warzel for BuzzFeed. And, as if on cue, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has a bunch of privacy questions for...

Records A person who had a job interview in Uber's Washington office in 2013 was given access to the company's "God view" tool for entire day, reports Craig Timberg for the Washington Post. "He happily crawled through the database looking up the records of people he knew – including a family member of a prominent politician," Timberg says. The New York Times' Mike Isaac sums up Uber's current efforts to manage its privacy debacle, reporting that in response to Senator Al Franken's detailed inquiries, the company has hired Hogan Lovells, a Washington law firm, "to conduct an audit of its privacy practices and recommend any changes." PandoDaily's Mark Ames has written damning story about the troubled relationship between eBay and Craigslist, a...

Determined Republican presidential candidates still have an uphill climb in their efforts to woo Silicon Valley tech money, reports Tony Romm of Politico. After detailing the efforts of Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul to make inroads, Romm notes the serious policy issues that divide them from many tech donors, including net neutrality, NSA reform and immigration reform. The Obama White House holiday tour has gone digital, with a robot dog as homage to the Maker movement, reports Juliet Eilperin for the Washington Post. Uber has taken "disciplinary action" against its New York City general manager Josh Mohrer for alleged privacy violations, Alison Griswold reports for Slate. Ex-Googler (and popularized of the hashtag) Chris Messina asks on Medium, "What’s going on...