MC Weekly Update 1/16: Looking at the Evidence

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• A new study found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” - Gregory Eady, Tom Paskhalis, Jan Zilinsky, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker/ Nature Communications, @CSMaP_NYU
  • We hear from Josh Tucker, a co-author of the paper and co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics. Importantly, the findings are limited to Twitter where a small, highly partisan audience was targeted. The findings do not fully reflect the multifaceted impact Russian interference had on faith in American elections. @j_a_tucker
• A study conducting a $9 million social media advertising campaign reaching two million moderate voters in five battleground states found little effect for driving voter turnout during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. - Minali Aggarwal, Jennifer Allen, Alexander Coppock, Dan Frankowski, Solomon Messing, Kelly Zhang, James Barnes, Andrew Beasley, Harry Hantman, Sylvan Zheng/ Nature Human Behaviour, @_JenAllen
  • We hear from one of the co-authors, Sol Messing, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University. He highlights why campaigns might want to shift to focus on early voter turnout based on the findings. - @SolomonMg
• Twitter is cutting off API access to third party clients in an effort to force users to return to Twitter’s own website and apps, according to messages reviewed by The Information. It was previously reported that users of apps including Tweetbot and Echofon were experiencing bugs late Thursday evening. - Erin Woo/ The Information, Ivan Mehta/ TechCrunch, Mitchell Clark/ The Verge
• State universities are banning access to TikTok on their WiFi networks and official devices in response to nearly two dozen state bans on government access to the popular short video social media service with a Chinese parent company. - Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times, Kate Mcgee/ The Texas Tribune
• Apple promised to provide more information about why it bans certain apps from its App Store in countries like China and Russia in response to pressure from activist investors. - Kenza Byran, Patrick Mcgee/ Financial Times
• Legal corner:
  • “A public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.” - Gene Johnson/ Associated Press
  • The Supreme Court took a new case, Counterman v. Colorado, about what kind of mens rea, or intent, is necessary to prove a true threat. The case is based on the prosecution of a man who stalked and harassed a local musician on Facebook for years. - SCOTUSblog
  • In a new Supreme Court brief, Google argues that holding the company liable for recommendation systems that promoted ISIS videos in a case brought by the parents of a terrorist attack victim could “upend the internet” and result in websites with either extensive censorship or floods of questionable content, but nothing in-between. - John McKinnon/ The Wall Street Journal
• President Biden set priorities for bipartisan internet policy cooperation in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, focusing on data privacy, Section 230, algorithmic transparency, and antitrust measures. The piece left a lot to be desired, but signals these will continue to be hot issues over the next two years.  - Joe Biden/ The Wall Street Journal

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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