Below: Elon Musk begins mass Twitter layoffs and FCC plans to open new office. First:
Voters may overestimate how well they spot junk news, study suggests
Most Americans say they are worried that voters will base their decisions in the upcoming midterm elections on false or misleading information, but only a fraction think that will happen to them, according to a poll of the Knight Foundation and Ipsos.
The researchers say the findings suggest that while Americans are now broadly confronted with the potential threats posed by online disinformation in US elections, they can be confident in their ability to thwart it individually.
According to the study, 61 percent of respondents are “somewhat” or “very” concerned that people in their community will make a decision about how to vote based on misleading information they see on social media, while 58 percent think people they will be deceived. from fake news.
But when asked about their chances of being swayed or misled by false or misleading information, the percentage of respondents who expressed concern dropped to 1 in 4.
“We all seem to be overestimating our abilities to navigate a fractured media landscape right now, and to me that has to be a big concern,” said John Sandssenior director for media and democracy at the Knight Foundation.
He added, “To me, it almost says more about the respondents than it does about the friends and neighbors of the respondents.”
The researchers also found a “high level of agreement” among the public that election misinformation on social media is a problem, including a majority of Democrats and Republicans.
Seventy-six percent of Americans said they think election misinformation is a problem; 88 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents agreed.
“This election cycle, it seems like Americans have connected the dots between the quality of information they consume online and the viability of our democracy,” Sands said. “To me, that’s something that comes off the page — that people recognize the dangers to democracy that come from harmful content online.”
But the partisan differences were more pronounced when respondents were asked what specific types of election disinformation should be curbed.
While a sizable majority of Democrats and Republicans said tech companies should limit blatant efforts to deceive voters, including providing inaccurate voting information, support among Republicans was more muted for limiting unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. or content that “affects how someone perceives their safety on election day.”
Eighty-nine percent of Democrats said social media should limit unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and 76 percent said the platforms should limit content related to election security, while support for such restrictions among Republicans was 54 percent to 49 percent. , respectively.
“That to me is consistent with some of our previous polling … that shows that Republicans, while they’re still concerned about these issues, they don’t show the same degree of concern or the same urgency of concern about them as Democrats,” Sands said. .
One area Americans largely agreed on: The government should stay away from regulating social media in an effort to minimize election disinformation.
According to the poll, only 1 in 3 people said they favored government regulation of social media companies to curb election disinformation, while higher percentages of respondents — 50 percent and 49 percent, respectively — called for individuals to take more personal responsibility. for the spread. of misinformation and for companies to more aggressively police fake content.
The poll was conducted Oct. 14-16 and surveyed 1,024 Americans 18 and older.
Musk begins Twitter layoffs
Twitter told employees of the impending layoffs in a Thursday email that came after the new owner Elon Musk and his deputies conduct a weekly review of the company, Faiz Siddhi reports. The layoffs are expected to affect teams across Twitter.
- “Team, In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will be going through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the email said. “We recognize that this will affect a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success going forward.”
- Twitter told employees it would notify them if they were affected by noon ET today.
Twitter employees first learned about the scale of the impending layoffs by looking at chat and calendar tools to get clues about what’s going on at the company and by communicating on an anonymous workplace gossip site. Shall we pray? reports. The layoff email was the first communication from the company’s new leadership to employees, Will REPORTS.
Meanwhile, major companies continue to ban their ads on the platform. General Mills, Mondelez International, Pfizer and Audi have temporarily halted their advertising, the Wall Street Journal said. Suzan Vranica AND Patience Haggin report. Musk has promised advertisers that Twitter won’t become a “free-for-all,” but his latest amplification of a conspiracy theory raised doubts among ad executives, my colleague Gerrit De Vynck reported this week.
Tech firms announce slowdowns and layoffs
Amazon is halting growing new corporate hires while tech companies Lyft and Stripe said they would cut 13 percent and 14 percent of their workforces, adding up to 1,700 people, according to the New York Times. Kalley Huang reports.
Tech giants including Meta and Amazon have slowed their hiring for months, while smaller tech companies like Robinhood and Coinbase have announced layoffs, Huang wrote. “But rarely have so many job cuts and hiring freezes in the industry been revealed on the same day.”
FCC plans to open a space office
The Federal Communications Commission plans to reorganize its international bureau so the commission could have a new space office and an office of international affairs, Reuters said. David Shepardson reports. It comes as regulators work to keep up with the growth of the satellite industry.
“The satellite industry is growing at a record pace, but here on the ground our regulatory frameworks for licensing them have not kept up,” FCC Chair. Jessica Rosenworcel said. “A new space age is here. Unlike the first space age, this is not limited to the capabilities of our political superpowers.”
Candidates continue to push online election denial — because it works (Bloomberg News)
Union says Alphabet cut workers from salary transparency data (Bloomberg News)
US May Alienate Chinese AI Talent It Wants to Attract (Protocol)
Vonage to pay $100 million to settle ‘unsolicited payment’ allegations (The Verge)
The Verifiable Anxiety of Media ‘Blue Checks’ (Paul Farhi)
- The American Enterprise Institute is hosting an event on online election disinformation today at 10 a.m
that‘That’s all for today – thank you so much for joining us! Be sure to tell others to subscribe of technology 202 here. Get in touch with tips, comments or greetings I tweet or email.
