The Social Media Report #27: deciding the next election
Discover more from The Social Media Report, by Drew Benvie
The Social Media Report #27: deciding the next election
Facebook talks to academics about creating election commission
In this edition of The Social Media Report, connecting the dots between a couple of major news stories and the odd royal appearance, I take a look at the issue of outsourcing safety online, and how social media’s looking at the future of influence on elections.
I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.
The business of safety online and protecting society from manipulation through social media is one of the most pressing themes around right now. This week, The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, took to the stage at a GQ event to address the issue, with a piece to camera which you can view here on how social media misinformation is affecting public safety, specifically through encouraging Covid vaccine hesitancy. Prince Harry has called for governments to intervene. This is a topic I’ve explored in some depth, especially how shady organisations are paying influencer to spread fake news.
Deciding what stays and what comes down on social media isn’t just formative to society, it’s also big business. Two connected movements on this topic form the last week are worth exploring in a bit more detail:
Facebook is setting up a new commission to decide on content removal that affects election integrity, and…
Facebook outsources $500m+ a year’s worth of content moderation to third parties such as Accenture.
Both these findings came about from separate investigations from the New York Times, and the latter story in particular is a long read that’s worth a few minutes of your time.
The thorny side of moderating social media: the content moderation investigation by the New York Times digs deep into the process of taking down harmful information from social media, which itself has to deal with vast volumes of information. Moderating content is a thorny business, with people who carry it out reporting PTSD due to the types of images and videos they have to watch all day every day. But political issues online are more nuanced. If even a video of a dog being skinned alive is not a clear cut case, according to one source quoted by NYTimes, how on earth does an outsourced content moderator decide whether a clandestine campaign, such as those we’ve seen during the Cambridge Analytica exposé, is real, fake, and whether it interferes in public opinion?
Did big social see this coming? Social media’s influence on elections is arguably the most contentious of exports that silicon valley has created. This is certainly the picture painted in a keynote delivered by Eric Schmidt which I attended in 2019, where the former Google CEO said: “the tech industry missed the disinformation issue and political interference - we didn't foresee how powerful information could be in democracy.” Hence, of course, why initiatives like the Facebook Oversight Board now exist. And why other social networks are considering them also.
This is why the news about Facebook laying plans to add another layer to its content moderation, specifically for elections, is so important. In the report published this week, NYTimes says that Facebook has begun speaking to academics about setting up the new independent election commission later this year.
Is government intervention a help or a hinderance? Back to pressure from public figures like this week’s appearance by Prince Harry, and whether it’s time for governments to intervene. This is a delicate issue of course, as election integrity on social media relies on political parties themselves and their involvement in the process. Elections are just around the corner in France, Germany and Brazil, for example. Whether outsourcing to a consultancy, to an independent advisory board, or to a government body, one thing that’s clear is that this is a problem that’s only building in prominence and visibility. That in itself actually has to be a good thing to educate the wider public, which is a major part of the solution.
My must reads of the week
Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week.
Innovation
Dom Hoffman has created a social network ‘like nothing you’ve ever seen’: a with a mix of social networking, gaming, NFTs and crypto, Platformer has this fascinating interview with the creator or Loot, and formerly Vine. When Casey Newton says that this was a rare tech interview where basically every fact of it surprised him, you know it’s worth your attention.
China to set up startup innovation stock market: China's President says a new stock exchange in Beijing for innovation focused SMEs is coming.
Safety
Twitter planning raft of new safety controls: such as hiding old tweets and follower privacy.
Amazon is also scaling up content moderation: this is for sites hosted on Amazon’s servers.
Networks
Washington Post is hiring two more people for its TikTok team: the newspaper is well respected for the TikTok content it churns out.
Reddit going public: reports suggest Reddit is going to IPO, muscling in on big social, as it is hiring lawyers and bankers.
Facebook explains how it helped people free Afghanistan: the social network also allows Afghans ‘one click lockdowns’ of accounts to prevent non-friends from seeing personal updates.
Law
South Korea’s big experiment in app law: the move is about how small companies (ie app makers) can make money and grow, and is being watched closely by the market.
China is limiting kids’ video game playing time to 3hrs per week: three days a week, one hour a day (Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings only).
NFTs
An doge meme NFT broken into small parts has sold for $200m+ more than it was bought: in a move known as fractionalizaion, an NFT that was bought for $4m has been broken into 17 billion tokens and sold for a total of $221m.
Talent agents are signing NFT brands: the next celebrities are artists who make NTFs it seems.
Interviews
An interview with creator VC Li Jin: a figure I’ve been reading a ton about recently, by Taylor Lorenz. Touches on NFTs, influencers and the passion economy.
There’s a global shortage in microchips: an interview with Harvard professor Willy Shih on what this means in phones, computers, cars and PS5s - it’s all about the impact on covid on factory facilities.
The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.
You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.