2016election
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HBO’s 'Kill Chain' doc highlights the flaws in US election machines
While COVID-19 might be putting just about everything else on hold, we're still marching towards a presidential election later this year. After the high-profile interference of 2016, election security and foreign meddling are still critical issues, but many states still aren't doing enough to ensure the integrity of the process. A documentary premiering tonight on HBO proves a sobering reminder of the fragility of America's voting infrastructure.
Fake news is down on Facebook in the US and France, say three studies
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have not had a great year. From being called in front of Congress to getting lashed by the media for its appalling handling of user data, the pressure has been on the social media site to get things right. Even calls for Zuckerberg to be kicked out as chairman are starting to percolate. But Zuckerberg might be able to breath a little easier today as three new independent studies show that fake news overall is going down on the website he launched from his dorm room.
Americans fear they can’t identify social media bots
A new poll from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank that studies trends, found that many Americans fear they cannot discern a bot from an actual person on social media. This study did not tackle the percentage of people who have been fooled by bots, but more simply, what general knowledge and awareness Americans have. About half -- 47 percent -- of the people who've heard of bots feel confident or somewhat confident that they can recognize one on social media. Only seven percent felt they were very confident. This is contrast with another study done by Pew in December of 2016 that found 84 percent of Americans felt they could readily recognize fake news. According to the study, about 66 percent of Americans have heard of social media bots-- to at least some extent -- and are aware of their existence. Another 34 percent had never heard of bots at all. The margin of error for the 4,581-person sample was 2.4 percentage points.
What legacy will WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leave behind?
"Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta's emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?" Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Wikileaks founder, editor-in-chief and self-styled leader Julian Assange during a televised interview.
Reality Winner will plead guilty for leaking NSA election hacking info
A little over a year ago, The Intercept posted top-secret NSA documents covering Russian attacks on US voting systems, showing they hacked at least one voting software company and attempted to phish more than 100 local officials. Despite emails the outlet received (via FOIA requests) showing local officials didn't even know about the hacking until they read news reports, the government contractor who allegedly leaked the documents has been in prison ever since. Now an organization that supports whistleblowers, The Courage Foundation, has announced that the contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, will plead guilty in an Augusta, GA federal courtroom at 10 AM ET. Charged under the Federal Espionage Act, she faced up to ten years in prison.
Let’s stop pretending Facebook cares
The really great thing to come out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that Facebook will now start doing that thing we were previously assured at every turn they were doing all along. And all it took was everyone finding out about the harvesting and sale of everyone's data to right-wing zealots like Steve Bannon for political power. Not Facebook finding out because they already knew. For years. In fact, Facebook knew it so well, the company legally threatened Observer and NYT to prevent their reporting on it, to keep everyone else from finding out.
Cambridge Analytica CEO: 'we ran all the digital campaign' for Trump
At the same time Cambridge Analytica announced it's suspending CEO Alexander Nix, Channel 4 News released a second report on the company based on undercover videos. In this report, it shows executives claiming that their work was responsible for Trump's "narrow victory" by 40,000 votes in three states. Nix said in the video that "We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy." In a quote that may be more relevant due to the ongoing investigations, he also said the company uses "self-destructing email" to avoid leaving any trace of its communications. In his words, the candidate (Trump) is "always" the puppet, told by his campaign team what to do and say, while politicians who asked questions after the fact weren't technical enough to understand what happened.
Whistleblower explains how Cambridge Analytica 'exploited' Facebook
Last night Facebook announced bans against Cambridge Analytica, its parent company and several individuals for allegedly sharing and keeping data that they had promised to delete. This data reportedly included information siphoned from hundreds of thousands of Amazon Mechanical Turkers who were paid to use a "personality prediction app" that collected data from them and also anyone they were friends with -- about 50 million accounts. That data reportedly turned into information used by the likes of Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and the Donald Trump campaign for social media messaging and "micro-targeting" individuals based on shared characteristics. Now, reports by The New York Times and The Guardian reveal what was behind the timing of that Friday night news dump. According to reporters from both outlets, which were collaborating, the social network had downplayed their reporting and even threatened to sue The Guardian, over what they learned from documents and a whistleblower (who Facebook included in its ban list): Christopher Wylie.
Russian trolls used Tumblr to influence American voters
If you thought that Tumblr was just fan fiction and monochrome erotica GIFs, then you probably haven't been paying attention. The blogging platform has also, in recent years, become a hotbed of Russian activists seeking to disrupt American politics. That's the charge leveled at the platform by Buzzfeed and Professor Jonathan Albright, an authority on so-called fake news.
House Intel Committee releases Russia-backed Facebook election ads
The House Intelligence Committee has begun a hearing with leading internet titans. As it promised to do last month, the committee released a collection of data Facebook ads, and Twitter accounts run by Russia-backed accounts on the social network. They're just a sample of the trove that foreign groups paid $100,000 to host on Facebook, part of a campaign that reached 126 million Americans, the social network announced earlier this week. How much those ads influenced the election is what the committee hopes to answer.
Twitter will also be at the Senate's Russia hearings
Social media played a huge part in determining the outcome of the 2016 election, and there's a suspicion that the ad-tracking tools those platforms offer could have been hijacked by nefarious forces. Shortly after news broke that Facebook will appear before a Senate hearing into Russian interference, Wired is reporting that Twitter will do the same.
Facebook may still not know full extent of Russian ad buys
It's been just over a week since Facebook admitted to discovering that it sold $100,000 in ads to hundreds of fake pages and accounts that were both related to each other and apparently run from Russia. Both Democratic and Republican senators are looking for some sort of public hearing on the matter. Now, according to a report by CNN Money, sources familiar with the matter say that Facebook still doesn't know the full extent of the possible fake news ring and that there still may be more ads on Facebook to this day.
Can we put the fake news genie back in the bottle?
The 2016 presidential campaign has definitively shown us that you shouldn't rely on Facebook for all of your news. Even at its best, you're likely to be exposed primarily to viewpoints and stories you already agree with. Being ensconced in a internet belief bubble takes away a lot of the nuance that exists in the real world -- while that lack of nuance likely helped Donald Trump become the next President of the United States. But beyond the narrow viewpoint that comes from getting news through Facebook is a bigger problem: Fake news has been proliferating on the site at a rapid pace. In August, Facebook made some changes to its "trending news" section, removing human editors and replacing them with an algorithm. Ironically, the move seemed like a response to reports that those human editors were biased against conservative news. Without those editors patrolling the trending section, it became much easier for false stories to slip through. Indeed, a false report about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly being fired spread like wildfire just days after the change was announced.
Facebook employees are unofficially trying to defeat fake news
Ever since America opted to elect that guy to its highest office, a lot of accusatory fingers have been pointed toward Facebook. After all, the social network has the attention of hundreds of millions of voters and has a reputation for proliferating propaganda. Mark Zuckerberg has refuted the accusation that Facebook's laissez-faire attitude toward fake news contributed to Trump's win, but his employees disagree. BuzzFeed has spoken to several sources within the company that say dozens of workers are privately investigating the company's actions.
4chan might have knocked out Hillary Clinton call centers yesterday
It shouldn't come as a shock that many denizens of internet cesspool 4chan are fans of Donald Trump. So it's also not a huge surprise that one 4chan user apparently took it upon himself to disrupt a segment of Hillary Clinton's get out the vote call centers. As reported by The Verge, workers with NextGen Climate (a group dedicated to raising awareness to climate change issues) noticed problems with their automated calling program yesterday -- it got slower and eventually would cut out for hours at a time.
Engadget's Election Day liveblog
Engadget's editors will be watching the election results roll in all night. If you want to know what they're reading, where they're tracking the vote and what is capturing their attention on social media tune in here to the Engadget election liveblog. And, if you've got questions not answered by our guide to the candidates hit us up on Twitter and we'll do our best to answer them.
How the internet can help you vote tomorrow
Tomorrow is election day in the United States. More than a year of political maneuvering, partisan fundraising, polarizing debates and 24-hour election coverage comes to a close on Tuesday, November 8th. However, that's not where this wild ride ends. Tomorrow, US citizens and the electoral college will choose a new president to lead the country for the next four years, ushering in a new political era with any outcome -- whether Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. If you're an eligible voter and you want to be a part of this historic decision, there are plenty of digital tools designed to help you figure out where, when, how and why to vote.
Where Trump and Clinton stand on tech and science
I know what you're all thinking: "Thank god this election is almost over." Regardless of your political affiliation I think we can all agree November 8th can't come fast enough. But in the final days it can't hurt to make sure you're pulling the lever for the candidate that best reflects your beliefs and priorities. So take a few minutes and check out Engadget's election guide to see where Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson stand on the most important tech and science issues for 2016 and beyond. We pored over their records, speeches, etc... and laid out the candidate's positions in their own words and then gave them a grade based on their demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. If you have questions about how we grade or need a quick primer on the issues, check out this quick rundown. Obviously there are plenty of other issues to consider too, but we're willing to bet few other guides to the issues will spill as many words on cyber security and broadband infrastructure. Click here to see all the candidates' report cards.
Anonymously speak to a Trump supporter with 'Call a Deplorable'
If this Presidential race has got you stuck in a political echo chamber on Facebook, then maybe you just need a safe space to ask someone how on Earth they could possibly hold different political views than yourself. That's the intention behind CallADeplorable.com and CallAnElitist.com, anyway -- an opposing pair of new sites that popped up in advance of tonight's third and final Presidential debate.
How to watch the third (and final) US presidential debate
It's been a long damn road, getting from there to here, but we're finally at the third and final presidential debate. But for the good of democracy, and the country, we're all going to tune in anyway to see what both candidates get up to. After all, the first debate was a good excuse for a stiff drink and the second gave us a 70-year-old man dry humping a chair, Ken Bone and so many karaoke tweets. Thankfully, no matter where you are and what device you're rocking, there's a way to watch the final showdown between Hillary and Donald. The show begins at 9pm ET / 6pm PT and will be broadcast live from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
