Campaigns
Biden quietly had his biggest online fundraising day after Trump was convicted
Politico
"The total amount — $8.1 million for Biden’s campaign and two joint fundraising committees on May 31, per a campaign official — still pales in comparison to what Trump’s campaign said it raised in the aftermath of his conviction."
Democratic National Convention will open media credentials to influencers
Washington Post
"Young voters ages 18 to 29 were key to Biden’s win in 2020, backing him over Trump by a 25-point margin, and they are increasingly getting their information about politics from social media."
Unwelcome at the Debate, RFK Jr.’s Star Shines on TikTok Live
Wired
"It was the second town hall the long-shot independent candidate has done with TikTokker Tiffany Cianci and her community. Cianci has become known for organizing livestreams with third-party campaigns and other creators over the past year. Thursday’s event was the fourth event, and though it reached just a few thousand viewers, Cianci says they’ve received hundreds of thousands of views in the past."
Content
Unmasked: The GOP Operative Making Those Viral Frozen Biden Videos
The Daily Beast
"When you look at the video and ask yourself, ‘If my Dad was doing that, would I force him to seek medical attention?’ And the answer is honestly yes… you know you have a winner."
International
Politicians' claims rather than AI fakes have kept UK election fact-checkers busy
Press Gazette
"For all the predictions that this would be the ‘generative AI election’, so far we’ve seen relatively few signs of deepfakes and other such content gaining traction. Instead, our fact checking has focused on what politicians have actually said, and whether it holds up to scrutiny."
Social Media
New SCOTUS decision allows Biden administration to keep talking to platforms about misinformation
The Verge
"While the majority opinion acknowledges that the government actors 'played a role' at times in some of the social media platform’s content moderation decisions, it says that 'the evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment.'
TikTok tumbles into 2024
FWIW
"Political and non-political creators alike have long alleged that the platform censors, deprioritizes, or 'shadow bans' certain words or topics, without clearly telling users what’s not allowed. The company’s Community Guidelines, updated several weeks ago, clearly state that some content is indeed ineligible for the app’s algorithmic 'For You' feed."
Technology
Evidence of a log scaling law for political persuasion with large language models
Arxiv
"Our findings suggest that further scaling model size will not much increase the persuasiveness of static LLM-generated messages."
.png){kind=icon}