March 28, 2024

Mediator: Kissing Babies, Loving Scrapple, Fighting Viral Hoaxes: ’20 Race’s New Routine

And then there’s Microchip, a social media presence that BuzzFeed News declared “the bot King who helps Trump win Twitter.” Microchip claimed to be a software developer from Utah when BuzzFeed communicated with the account in 2017. But who knows?

Many suspicious accounts were suspended, only to be reborn under different handles before disappearing — and it’s not clear they won’t be able to spring back to life for 2020.

Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, who’s in charge of devising tools to eradicate junk speech on the platform, conceded to my colleagues Cade Metz and Mike Isaac that, when it comes to problematic posts, “it’s never going to go to zero.’’

It seems likely that anonymous, large-scale disinformation attacks are going to be as much a part the election process as candidates kissing babies and pretending to relish scrapple. Are we O.K. with that?

Over the last century, the United States has made a number of moves to take anonymous attacks out of politics, albeit with varied success, through campaign finance laws. It did so based on a bipartisan consensus that voters had a right to know who was trying to influence them and why.

“One thing we’ve assumed for a good part of our history is, we need to have electoral integrity, so a certain amount of activity needs to be disclosed,” said the former Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Democrat who has championed campaign finance reform. “Who’s financing the people who get elected? People have a right to know that — it’s a foundation for the integrity of the system.”

In 2002, Mr. Feingold and his Republican colleague John McCain pushed through a law that sought to force more political advertisers to disclose their backers ahead of elections. Mr. McCain had extra motivation after supporters of his primary opponent in 2000, George W. Bush, ran commercials smearing his record without having to reveal their involvement — the sort of thing that can happen on social media without drawing much notice.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/media/social-media-presidential-campaign-2020.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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