The latest digital politics news and perspective, including a highlight or two from late 2017. Send in good stories as you see them! Just email me or send a tweet.
- Russia pushes more ‘deep state’ hashtags. “Following the success of #ReleaseTheMemo, Russian-influenced Twitter accounts seek to rile up Trump supporters with new messages, analysts say.” C.f. Russia-linked Twitter accounts are working overtime to help Devin Nunes and WikiLeaks.
- Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny scours Instagram to accuse a top Kremlin official of ties to a billionaire. Just your average sex party on a yacht.
- Russian Trolls Stoked Anger Over Black Lives Matter More Than Was Previously Known.
- Russian Trolls Ran Wild On Tumblr And The Company Refuses To Say Anything About It.
- Trump Supporters Spread the Majority of Phony News on Social Media.
- Mueller’s Team Has Interviewed Facebook Staff As Part Of Russia Probe.
- Facebook says it can’t guarantee social media is good for democracy.
- Draft FEC Rules Target Political Ads on Social Media.
- After The Cookie, Where Does Digital Targeting Go?. C.f. What $25,000 Buys In Digital Advertising.
- How to keep reaching supporters on Facebook.
- Ask The Campaign Doc: Is YouTube Pre-Roll A Risk?
- 2018 And the Rise of Digital GOTV.
- Twitter Made a Small Change to How It Shows Retweets. That’s Bad News for Bots.
- One of Congress’ most prolific tweeters and frequent Trump critics [Ben Sasse] tell us why he quit Twitter.
- Ted Cruz Raised Less Money Than His Democratic Challenger Last Quarter. A blizzard of small-dollar (online) donations for Beto O’Rourke.
- A ‘$1.50’ deleted tweet by House Speaker Paul Ryan just raised his Democratic challenger more than $150,000. Striking while the, er, iron is hot.
- Republican National Committee has huge financial edge heading into 2018 midterms, in part driven by Trump’s online small-donor list. But the financial gap gets much smaller when you take the other Dem party committees into account.
- Ethics training reminds White House staff not to use encrypted messages for government business.
- Judge should order [Missouri] governor [Greitens] to stop using ephemeral messaging app, lawyers say, amid an ongoing investigation.
- 2018’s Hottest Digital Trend: The EU General Data Protection Regulation. C.f. How To Keep Your Data And AI Accountable and Epolitics.com’s previous coverage.
- Hillary Superfan and Much-Maligned Verrit Founder Peter Daou Isn’t Mad. In Fact, He Thinks It’s Funny..
- Names of campaign donors to be flashed during live stream of Trump’s State of the Union speech. A small-donor push during the SOTU.
- Facebook Is Putting More “Local News†in Your Feed. That’s a Lot Harder Than It Sounds.
- The Czech election says more about the state of Western democracy than we’d like to admit. Note the role of social media in promoting conspiracy theories.
- Virtual Reality’s “Consensual Hallucinationâ€. “The success of VR technology will depend on its ability to mimic—or improve upon—the tangible experience of being with another person.”
- Consultant Predictions For 2018. Plenty of prognosticating on the digital front.
- An Internet Archive Seeks to Rekindle the Egyptian Revolution’s Spirit.
- U.S. soldiers are revealing sensitive and dangerous information by jogging. Fitbit as an intelligence source!
- Trump Researcher Arrested for Child Porn Also Made Mysterious Request for Latino Voter Info.
- And finally, unintended consequences: Twitter’s new character limit is making Trump sound coherent.
Too much is never enough? Check out previous Quick Hits editions.
– cpd