presidential election
Twitter widens its view of bad actors to fight election fiddlers
Twitter has announced more changes to its rules to try to make it harder for people to use its platform to spread politically charged disinformation and thereby erode democratic processes. In…
Symantec offers free anti-spoofing services to US political campaigns and election groups
Symantec is the latest private security company to offer its expertise to vulnerable political targets on the house. Today the company announced that it would extend its “Project Dolphin” service…
Facebook pilots new political campaign security tools — just 50 days before Election Day
Facebook has rolled out a “pilot” program of new security tools for political campaigns — just weeks before millions of Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections. The…
Facebook, Twitter: US intelligence could help us more in fighting election interference
Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has admitted that the social networking giant could have done more to prevent foreign interference on its platforms, but said that the government also…
Featured Article
Millions of Texas voter records exposed online
A massive trove of voter records containing personal information on millions of Texas residents has been found online. The data — a single file containing an estimated 14.8 million records — was left on an unsecured server without a password. Texas has 19.3 million registered voters. It’s the latest exposure of voter data in a…
Fake news inquiry calls for social media levy to defend democracy
A UK parliamentary committee which has been running a multi-month investigation into the impact of online disinformation on political campaigning — and on democracy itself — has published a preliminary…
Russian indictments show that the US needs federal oversight of election security
President Trump’s Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, on the heels of 12 Russian intelligence officials indicted for hacking the 2016 election, made it clear that this administration has zero commitment to protect…
Cambridge Analytica’s Nix said it licensed ‘millions of data points’ from Acxiom, Experian, Infogroup to target US voters
The repeat grilling by the U.K. parliament’s DCMS committee today of Alexander Nix, the former CEO of the now ex company Cambridge Analytica — aka the controversial political and commercial ad…
The company at the center of a major Facebook data misuse scandal has failed to respond to a legal order issued by the U.K.’s data protection watchdog to provide a…
How Facebook gives an asymmetric advantage to negative messaging
Few Facebook critics are as credible as Roger McNamee, the managing partner at Elevation Partners. As an early investor in Facebook, McNamee was not only a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg but also introduced him to…
Regulators in the UK are also calling for more hearings into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
As more details emerge about Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data in the U.S. presidential election, members of Parliament in the UK are joining congressional leadership in the U.S. to…
Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that worked on the Trump campaign
Facebook announced late Friday that it had suspended the account of Strategic Communication Laboratories, and its political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica — which used Facebook data to target voters…
Study: Russian Twitter bots sent 45k Brexit tweets close to vote
Research conducted by a group of data scientists looking at how information was diffused on Twitter around the June 2016 EU referendum vote suggests more than 150,000 Russian accounts were…
Facebook and Twitter play bigger role in Congressional election-hacking probe
As Congressional investigations into Russia’s role in manipulating the election for U.S. president deepens, tech companies are assuming a more central role in the inquiries. Both Twitter and Facebook are…
The United States has finally announced a comprehensive package of responses to Russia’s 2016 influence operation against the U.S. elections. This is a significant response, but a closer reading of…
Why now, more than ever, we need a Twitter that works
Remember 2012, when we called it the “Twitter Election” due to Obama’s skill in exploiting the fledgling platform? It seems almost quaint now. 2016 will be remembered as the election…
Imagine a typical day in 2020: You read the news and realize the presidential election is coming up. Based on a predicted model that takes into account your previously expressed…
Kenyan startup Ushahidi launches a crowdsourced campaign to monitor the U.S. election
The Kenyan software company Ushahidi has launched a campaign to observe the upcoming U.S. elections. The operation, called USA Election Monitor, will track voting irregularities reported via website, email, Twitter and SMS…
The perils of polling in a Brexit and Donald Trump world
In the digital era of big data, polling is ironically more fraught. The reasons offer a microcosm of both the promise and perils of Big Data.
You can endorse your preferred presidential candidate on Facebook now
Facebook rolled out a new feature today that lets users endorse presidential candidates, a move that will probably bring even more acrimonious comments about this election cycle into your News Feed.…
What it takes to secure the elections
While virtually every industry and domain is flourishing and being revolutionized by technological advances, more than three-quarters of U.S. citizens will vote for their next president on paper ballots this…
Why I’m giving my company Election Day off
This year’s U.S. presidential election is confusing for everyone. The popularity contest that has become the election is diluting our time, attention and ability to think critically. Which is ironic,…
Tech and the presidential race
For presidential nominee Donald Trump, the importance of articulating a vision for the tech industry seems to be lost. While nominee Hillary Clinton released a comprehensive technology policy platform that…
Peter Thiel to back Trump as GOP presidential candidate
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a California delegate in Cleveland this summer. Thiel’s level of support for the Donald is unclear, but Thiel will…
Want to know who to vote for? IBM’s Watson Elections will make an emotional decision for you
Sad, mad, glad, confused about the presidential race so far? Well, if you are really lost on who to vote for, IBM may have a solution depending on your mood.…
What if Facebook forgot Donald Trump?
This year, more money will be spent on political ads – $11.4 billion – than ever before. According to Borrell Associates around $1 billion of that will be spent on…
In 2008, Barack Obama redrafted the electioneering script, becoming the first presidential candidate to use social media as a political channel. His opponents’ failure to grasp the significance of social…
Impact, Investment And Demand: Three Pillars For Civic Tech Success
Last year was one of great momentum for civic tech. We saw more people and resources than ever enter the space, garnering interest from startups, corporations, government agencies and investment…
As we head into the presidential primaries, there is no question big data and analytics will play a major role in targeting voters, driving contributions and ultimately determining who will…
INNOVATE2016: Understanding The Zignal To Noise Ratio In The Presidential Race
Welcome to INNOVATE2016, a weekly interview series focusing on how new technology and innovation is influencing the upcoming Presidential election. According to our first guest the 2016 election is likely…
