Podcasts about election integrity partnership

Can free speech and content moderation on social media coexist? Jonathan Rauch and Renée DiResta discuss the complexities of content moderation on social media platforms. They explore how platforms balance free expression with the need to moderate harmful content and the consequences of censorship in a digital world. Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth” and “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.” Renée DiResta was the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and contributed to the Election Integrity Partnership report and the Virality Project. Her new book is “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.” READ THE TRANSCRIPT. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 03:14 Content moderation and free speech 12:33 The Election Integrity Partnership 18:43 What activity does the First Amendment not protect? 21:44 Backfire effect of moderation 26:01 The Virality Project 30:54 Misinformation over the past decade 37:33 Did Trump's Jan 6th speech meet the standard for incitement? 44:12 Double standards of content moderation 01:00:05 Jawboning 01:11:10 Outro Show notes: Election Integrity Partnership report (2021) The Virality Project (2022) Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton (2024) “This Place Rules” (2022) Murthy v. Missouri (2024) “Why Scholars Should Stop Studying 'Misinformation',” by Jacob N. Shapiro and Sean Norton (2024) “FIRE Statement on Free Speech and Social Media” 

We talked to Renee Diresta, when she in the middle of a life-changing crisis. Elon Musk's hand-picked "journalists" were testifying in front of Congress as part of the “Twitter Files.” Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger sounded the alarm about a supposedly vast conspiracy between think tanks, big tech companies, and government intelligence agencies to censor the free speech of conservative Americans. They referred to that conspiracy as the “Censorship Industry Complex," identifying its leader as a shadowy former CIA intern named Renee Diresta. The reality is that Diresta was involved in a 2020 academic project called the Election Integrity Partnership, which studied then gave reports on viral social media content steeped in misinformation. She joins us to discuss her new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.racket.newsWhen Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership stirred up controversy, its participants defiantly planned a rerun for this year

From August 20, 2020: This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former chief security officer of Yahoo and Facebook. Alex has appeared on the podcast before, but this time, they discussed a new coalition he helped set up called the Election Integrity Partnership—a coalition focused on detecting and mitigating attempts to limit voting or delegitimize election results. Disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. presidential election has already started popping up online, and it's only going to increase as November draws closer. The coalition aims to counter this in real time. So how will it actually work?They also asked Alex for his hot takes on TikTok—the popular video sharing platform facing pressure over concern about influence from the Chinese government.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joining me today is independent journalist Matt Taibbi. He was one of the leading publishers of the Twitter Files and you can find his work on Substack at https://www.racket.news  We will be talking about the UK Files, Media Matters' case with Elon Musk & New Twitter Files exposing the “Election Integrity Partnership”.   Support this channel directly here: https://bit.ly/RussellBrand-Support Listen as a podcast: https://podfollow.com/1648125917 Follow on social media: X: @rustyrockets INSTAGRAM: @russellbrand FACEBOOK: @russellbrand

In this episode, Lisa welcomes Dave Rubin to discuss government censorship, the state of the Republican party, and the influence of China and Marxist teachings. They express concern over biased media coverage, particularly regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the indoctrination of young people through platforms like TikTok. They also discuss the tactics of the Democratic party, including Joe Biden's strategy to fight Islamophobia, and the need for Republicans to counter these moves. The Truth with Lisa Boothe debuts new episodes every Monday & Thursday.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Lisa welcomes Dave Rubin to discuss government censorship, the state of the Republican party, and the influence of China and Marxist teachings. They express concern over biased media coverage, particularly regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the indoctrination of young people through platforms like TikTok. They also discuss the tactics of the Democratic party, including Joe Biden's strategy to fight Islamophobia, and the need for Republicans to counter these moves. The Truth with Lisa Boothe debuts new episodes every Monday & Thursday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.racket.newsA damning House report and new docs from the Twitter Files expose the "Election Integrity Partnership" as state censorship in a ski mask www.racket.news

In this episode, Lisa is joined by Congressman Jim Jordan. They discuss the extent of government censorship on American citizens, particularly conservatives. He talks about the collaboration between the federal government, big academia, and big tech to limit conservative speech and its impact on the 2020 election. He also discusses the censorship of information related to Hunter Biden's laptop and the role of the federal government in shaping the election. The conversation also touches on concerns about the 2024 election and efforts to curtail government censorship. New episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Lisa is joined by Congressman Jim Jordan. They discuss the extent of government censorship on American citizens, particularly conservatives. He talks about the collaboration between the federal government, big academia, and big tech to limit conservative speech and its impact on the 2020 election. He also discusses the censorship of information related to Hunter Biden's laptop and the role of the federal government in shaping the election. The conversation also touches on concerns about the 2024 election and efforts to curtail government censorship. New episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere and contributor Jaco Booyens join the show to discuss a recent report from the House Judiciary Committee that revealed information that the Department of Homeland Security created a Stanford University “disinformation” group that censored Americans' speech before the 2020 election. The group, named the Election Integrity Partnership, aimed to identify election-related content that needed to be censored. The report named prominent politicians like former President Trump, Senator Thom Tillis, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and conservative thinkers like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin. Today is Election Day across the country. States like Virginia are mixing up their entire state governments with 100 House seats up for election and 40 state Senate seats. States like Kentucky and Mississippi are electing their next governors. Ohio has abortion and marijuana on the ballot too. Senator John Fetterman is calling out his fellow Democrats in a shocking way. Today's Sponsors: With almost 20 years' experience converting IRAs and 401ks into precious metals IRAs, Birch Gold can help you. DIVERSIFY into gold with the help of Birch Gold Group. When you open a gold IRA, for every $10,000 you spend by December 22, Birch Gold will send you a FREE gold bar! Just text WHY to 989898 to claim eligibility before Black Friday! Take advantage of the Genucel best sale of the year and say goodbye to fine lines, crow's feet, bags and puffiness, the laugh lines, and dark spots! Go to http://genucel.com/WHY and enter promo code WHY at checkout to save over 70% off Genucel's Most Popular Products Package with Genucel 3 and dark spot corrector. Relief Factor isn't a drug, but it was developed by doctors to fight inflammation. Try it today. The 3-Week QuickStart is only $19.95. Go to http://www.relieffactor.com or call 800-4Relief to get your QuickStart today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The single most—I would say—significant whole-of-society initiative carried out by the counter-disinformation enterprise was the 2020 Election Integrity Partnership."In part two of my interview with Jacob Siegel, senior editor at Tablet Magazine, we dive deeper into technocratic information control, exploring how the Election Integrity Partnership and U.S. agencies colluded with media and Big Tech to socially engineer the populace—using anti-democratic means."We need to permanently end the relationship between the federal government and the technology sector as it exists now," says Mr. Siegel, who argues that the censorship enterprise is operating on the China model, having adopted the Chinese Communist Party's methods of surveillance and social control."The danger is that in competing with China, we'd become like China. And that's what has been happening so far," says Mr. Siegel.

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And we're back! For our first episode of 2023, we're excited to have invited Kate Starbird, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, to join CDT's own Will Adler, Senior Technologist for the Elections & Democracy project and Aliya Bhatia, Policy Analyst for the Free Expression project to sit down together. Jamal leads us through a conversation delving into the ways in which misinformation and disinformation can have disastrous effects on election integrity and trust, both domestically and abroad. The discussion explores the misconceptions about what disinformation is and whether the term "disinformation" is even a useful term anymore ("rumoring"?), as well as important work going on by coalitions of researchers like the Election Integrity Partnership. More on our host, Jamal: bit.ly/cdtjamal More on Kate: https://twitter.com/katestarbird More on Will: https://twitter.com/wtadler More on Aliya: https://twitter.com/AliyaBhatia More on the Election Integrity Partnership: https://www.eipartnership.net (CDT relies on the generosity of donors like you. If you enjoyed this episode of Tech Talk, you can support it and our work at CDT by going to cdt.org/techtalk. Thank you for putting democracy and individual rights at the center of the digital revolution.) Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.

“Whoever can control the Department of Dirty Tricks is able to use it to remove all opposition,” says Mike Benz.He is the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department diplomat under the Trump administration.The Twitter Files were just the tip of the iceberg, says Benz, who has been tracking the rise of the West's censorship industry for years.“22 million tweets were categorized as misinformation for purposes of takedowns or throttling through [the Election Integrity Partnership],” Benz said.“It wasn't just government individual takedown requests. It was government pressure … to create whole new categories of things to censor and then arming them with the artificial intelligence to then automatically scan and ban the new thought violations.”In this comprehensive two-part interview, Benz breaks down the major players in today's censorship regime and how tactics once used abroad were deployed to target Americans and so-called election “delegitimization” or COVID “misinformation” online.“Graphika was immediately working with NATO's essentially psychological warfare branch—the Hybrid Center of Excellence—in January 2020 … They had this sophisticated typography of what right-wing media was saying, what left-wing media was saying, what was being shared, the nodes and links between nodes of all the different narrative discourses on social media.”“They will have a revolving door at the professional level. That is, people who are in government roles, for example, in Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation at DHS, will get their next jobs at the German Marshall Fund or the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab … It is a career path. It is a path to power,” Benz says.Follow American Thought Leaders on social media:Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeaderTruth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeaderGettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleaderFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeadersGab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeaderTelegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

Stanford's Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:A bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. and could be extended to other social media companies with ties to “foreign adversaries” was introduced in the House and Senate, but lacks Democratic co-sponsors in the upper chamber. - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Rebecca Shabad/ NBC NewsMeta released its annual report on “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Enforcements,” noting the milestone of 200 takedowns. - Ben Nimmo, David Agranovich/ Meta, Alexander Martin/ The Record by Recorded Future, @DavidAgranovich, @benimmoTech trade association NetChoice sued the state of California in an attempt to block the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act over First Amendment protections for content moderation. The law would go into effect next year with broad online privacy and safety components for children. - Natasha Singer/ The New York Times, Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Rebecca Kern/ Politico ProThe Supreme Court schedule is set for hearings on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh on February 21 and February 22. The cases are focused on content moderation and recommendation algorithms. - Adi Robertson/ The Verge, @GregStohr"Former President Trump said Thursday that he'd ban the U.S. government from labeling any domestic speech as ‘misinformation' or ‘disinformation' if he returns to the White House.” - Julia Mueller/ The HillMatt Taibbi named the Election Integrity Partnership in a Friday afternoon version of the Twitter Files. - @mtaibbiTwitter suspended over 25 accounts that track private planes and nine journalists — including CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, Ryan Mac of the New York Times, and Drew Harwell of The Washington Post — who shared links about the @elonjet account which posts public information about the location of Musk's private jet. Most reporter accounts have since been reinstated after Musk conducted a Twitter poll on whether to enforce his new policy against sharing flight trackers and similar information. - Jason Abbruzzese, Kevin Collier, Phil Helsel/ NBC News, Ashley Capoot/ CNBC, Ryan Mac/ The New York Times, Paul Farhi/ The Washington Post, Jordan Pearson/ ViceMusk banned linking out to other platforms… and then conducted a Twitter poll, subsequently reversing the decision, with 87% of voters opposed, and taking down the tweet announcement and blog page on the policy. Some users are still unable to post links to Mastodon and other social media sites in tweets. - Mack DeGeurin/ Gizmodo, @JuddLegumMusk conducted a scientific Twitter poll asking if he should step down as CEO. Nearly 58% of the more than 17 million respondents voted for him to step down. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street JournalIt was coincidentally just after he was at the World Cup with Jared Kushner and... a bunch of Emiratis. Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer quipped that twitter's content moderation panel looks different these days. - @ianbremmerSports balls were kicked and a team scored more points than the other team after time was added, and then stopped, and then added, and then people lined up to kick more balls into the net than the other team. Congratulations to Argentina! - Ben Church/ CNNJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford's Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:The Election Integrity Partnership, led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, analyzed narratives with the potential to interfere in or delegitimize the 2022 midterm elections. - Election Integrity Partnership, @EI_Partnership, EIP Post-Election Update (.pdf)A divided Congress will likely mean more gridlock with a lot of smoke but no fire on Capitol Hill. - Ashley Gold, Peter Allen Clark/ Axios, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post,  Frank Konkel, Mariam Baksh, Kirsten Errick, Alexandra Kelley/ Nextgov, Anna Edgerton/ Bloomberg News A lot happened at Twitter:Chief Twit Elon Musk got into a Twitter feud with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) over impersonation issues on the site. - Ashley Capoot/ CNBCTwitter may have violated a Federal Trade Commission consent decree with the top brass who would be held responsible resigning the day the company's reporting was due. Musk dismissed potential personal liability, although Uber's former CSO knows that risk is real. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Department of Justice, @Riana_CryptoStanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn and data protection and privacy law expert Whitney Merrill will dig into this more with Evelyn later this week!Twitter is at serious risk of a breach with departures by the security, privacy, compliance, and trust and safety leaders last week and a drastic staff reduction. - John Sakellariadis/ Politico, @alexstamosMusk tweeted that he is “turning off the ‘microservices' bloatware” and seemingly fired an employee for tweeting that Musk didn't know what he was talking about. Now, two-factor authentication may be broken. - @elonmusk, Michael Kan/ PC Magazine, @josephmennMusk tweeted about Brazilian politics this morning… we are sure that will end well! He's previously promised to look into allegations of censorship in the country by far-right political figures in the country. - @elonmusk, Andrew Downie/ The GuardianA spoofed Twitter account resembling Eli Lilly and Co. with a purchased blue “verified” check mark tweeted that “insulin is free now,” causing the real company's market cap to drop $15 billion. Now, the company paused its Twitter ads, worth millions of dollars, and may pursue legal action. - Kyle Barr/ Gizmodo, Drew Harwell/ The Washington PostEvelyn has her calendar marked for the Big Game, a matchup of two 3-7 teams on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. PT. “Give 'em the axe, the axe, the axe!” - ESPNJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Evelyn and Alex talk about what the Election Integrity Partnership saw online in terms of mis- and dis-information around the midterms, and what the results might mean for tech policy. And... Elon. Sigh. What a week. Twitter's security team resigned -- what does this mean for compliance with an FTC consent order and... what does it mean for Twitter's security? Elon says they're turning off "microservices." That can't be good. What does it mean? And other exciting developments in the Musk/Twitter debacle.

Stanford's Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Elon Musk announced that Twitter will start charging $8 for users to keep or gain blue check marks on the platform, changing the meaning of the symbol to indicate subscribers to the “Twitter Blue” service. The company then delayed launch until after the midterms. - Ines Kagubare/ The Hill, @elonmuskBlue-chip companies including General Mills, Pfizer, and Volkswagen have all paused advertising on Twitter over concerns that Musk will limit content moderation on the platform. - Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin/ The Wall Street JournalAfter single-handedly hosting a call for Twitter with civil society and advocacy organizations, many of those participants were among the more than 60 advocacy and civil society organizations that called for an ad boycott on the platform. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Rebecca Kern, Mark Scott/ PoliticoElon Musk responded to a right-wing influencer's tweet suggesting he “has tortious interference claims” against activist groups involved in the ad boycott campaign. (spoiler: he doesn't) - @elonmusk, Mark Frauenfelder/ Boing BoingPeople are leaving Twitter and fleeing to… Mastodon? - Rachel Metz/ CNNRumble has suspended services in France, blaming government rules banning Russian state media and government accounts. - @rumblevideoRumble is building its own cloud services, a move similar to Parler, but that would require a more expansive scale for more highly trafficked video content. - Kaitlyn Tiffany/ The Atlantic, Taylor Hatmaker/ TechCrunch “The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that ‘leaked' documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the ‘smoking gun' of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.” - Mike Masnick/ TechdirtMore: “The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.”The Election Integrity Partnership published a blog on rumors and false and misleading narratives to expect on and after Election Day. - Election Integrity Partnership India is amending an IT law that regulates social media content moderation by adding a panel with three government-appointed members to review social media grievances. - Manish Singh, Jagmeet Singh/ TechCrunch, ScrollA revised Online Safety Bill is expected to head back to the UK House of Commons later this month with amendments that limit the government from forcing platforms to take action on “harmful but lawful” content. - Dev Kundaliya/ Computing, Chloe Chaplain/ i newspaperJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

We've reached the fourth Monday of the month and are now in the final lap with the finish line coming at the end of All Hallow's Eve. Shall we celebrate All Hallow's Day? Between now and then there's a lot to get through in as many installments of Charlottesville Community Engagement that I can put together between now and the time of disguise. I? Sean Tubbs. On today's version of this publication:* One person has died following an early morning shooting Sunday on the Downtown Mall * Charlottesville preparing to remove nine trees from the Downtown Mall* Two Charlottesville playgrounds remain closed while repairs continue* Time is running out to submit a poem to JMRL's latest contest* Albemarle County Supervisors finalize legislative priorities * The Center for Politics at UVA takes a look at concerns about the upcoming election Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.First shout-out: Rivanna Conservation Alliance Round-Up wrap-upIn today's first Patreon-fueled shout-out: The Rivanna Conservation Alliance would like to thank everyone who participated in the recent Rivanna River Round-Up! In all, 243 helped remove 173 tires, filled up 148 bags of trash and attended to 27 miles of river and trail. To help cover the costs, the Rivanna Conservation Alliance is selling t-shirts. Want to get involved with ongoing clean-up efforts? On Saturday, October 22, the RCA will hold a stream buffer maintenance day at Crozet Elementary School to check in on how trees planted three years ago are holding up. Visit rivannariver.org to learn more. One killed in early morning shooting SundayOne person has died following a shooting early Sunday morning on the Charlottesville Downtown Mall in which three people were hit with bullets. According to a release, the Charlottesville Police Department responded to the 200 block of West Main Street on the Downtown Mall. “The victims were then transported to UVA medical center for treatment; two of which are currently in stable condition. The third victim succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased later in the morning.”The release goes on to state that the incident does not pose an “immediate threat” and an investigation. A request for a follow-up this morning yielded no results. For more information, some other media coverage:* Charlottesville Mall shooting leaves one dead and two injured, Daily Progress* Police investigate fatal shooting on Downtown Mall, CBS19* CPD: 1 dead, 2 injured in connection with W. Main St. shooting, NBC29Photojournalist Eze Amos was on the Mall at the time. City crews preparing to remove some Downtown Mall treesLater this week, the city's Parks and Recreation Department will hold an information meeting on removing some of the trees on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. Riann Anthony is the deputy director of the department. “We are very lucky that the Downtown Mall trees have been in existence for this long,” Anthony said. “Some of them are healthy and others are not healthy but per our urban forester is that all of the trees are stressed from a number of factors.”Anthony addresses the city's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board last Thursday. He said the number one factor are the tree grates that he said are squeezing trees that have outgrown them. He also said heaters for outdoor restaurants also cause stress.“There's a lot of café spaces that also have little lights that they use, nails, to put the lights on and stuff like that nature,” Anthony said. The city has been studying this issue for many year but action has not yet been taken. Anthony said the city is looking to remove hazards that might be in danger of falling. The ones most at risk will be removed over the next few months.“These are trees that are in the worst shape and we are looking out for the best interest of our community and of the folks that work on the mall,” Anthony said. “We do not want to ever see a tree just fall.” Nine trees in all will be removed. The first education session will be on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. via Zoom. Two in-person meetings will be held next week. (meeting info)Anthony said the city is also seeking a consultant to help come up with a replacement policy for trees on the Downtown Mall. Charlottesville playground installation taking longer than expected The closure of city playgrounds at both Belmont Park and Meade Park will be a little longer than expected. The Parks and Recreation Department is installing new equipment at both locations and work had been expected to be completed this week. However, installation of individual pieces is taking more time. “We are extending the reopening date to tentatively, November 4th, but may open sooner if complete,” reads a press release that went out Friday morning. A Keaton Forest suite of playground structures is being installed at Belmont Park whereas Meade Park will have the first Modern City installation in Virginia. One more day to submit a poem for JMRL contestThe Jefferson Madison Regional Library and WriterHouse have teamed up for a poetry contest that ends tomorrow. If you're over 18 and have one original, unpublished poem you'd like to submit, there's an online form that's taking submissions through tomorrow at 5 p.m.  The theme is transformative change. “For hundreds of years, poets have altered the course of history by speaking out about issues that concern their communities, and this year's theme of transformation echoes that critical legacy of the power of the pen to affect positive change for all of us,” said WriterHouse executive director Sibley Johns. This contest is now in its sixth year. There are prizes for winners. For more information, visit jmrl.org/poetrycontest. Albemarle Supervisors set legislative priorities for 2023 General Assembly There are 79 days until the General Assembly convenes for the 2023 session for the second year with Glenn Youngkin in the Governor's Mansion. Last week, Albemarle Supervisors finalized their list of legislative priorities that they hope to convince legislators to turn into a bill. (2023 Legislative Priorities) (2023 Legislative Positions and Policy Statements)Supervisors last discussed the list in September and extensively discussed a request to expand the number of virtual meetings an appointed body can have. Another of the priorities is to request the ability for counties to decide for themselves if they want to hold a referendum on additional sales tax to generate revenue for school construction projects.“There are currently nine counties and one city in the Commonwealth which enjoy this authority to levy an additional one-percent sales tax which is used exclusively to fund school division capital projects,” said county attorney Steven Rosenberg. Legislation failed to make it out of a House of Delegates subcommittee last year. Another priority is to request a change of the eligibility rules for sites to participate in the Virginia Business Ready Sites program. Currently land in most economic development regions must be of a certain size to quality, and Albemarle wants that to be reduced.“There are not that many properties in the county that satisfy that 100 acre contiguous developable standard,” Rosenberg said.Albemarle wants to cut that in half to 50 acres and Rosenberg said two Go Virginia regions already have that lower threshold. “The economic development office (EDO) has identified sites that would otherwise fulfill the requirement but for their acreage,” Rosenberg said. “I will finally add on this item that there is one site in the county that does satisfy the requirement and it's in North Fork and the EDO is currently working with the University of Virginia Foundation in seeking funds for that site.” There will be one more discussion of the priorities in November if needed. See also: * House subcommittee kills school sales tax bills, February 25, 2022* Albemarle Supervisors to support legislation to allow advisory body meetings to go virtual, September 13, 2021)Second Shout-out is for the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards In today's second subscriber-supported shout-out, an area nonprofit wants you to know about what they offer to help you learn how to preserve, protect, and appreciate! The Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards holds several events throughout the year including a walk in western Albemarle County on the morning of November 12 through a well preserved and highly diverse woodland to see naturally occurring winterberry, spicebush, and dogwood laden with red berries. In abundance will be nuts from forest oaks, hickories, walnuts as well as orchard grown Chinese chestnuts, walnuts, pecans, and American hazelnuts. Registration is limited. There's also still time for an online Zoom tree identification class tomorrow night. Visit charlottesvilleareatreestewards.org for more information. Center for Politics forum explores election security in advance of Election Day Tensions are running high across the country as Election Day approaches and many members of one of the two American political parties continue to insist that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. The University of Virginia's Center for Politics held a forum last week to discuss the upcoming elections moderated by Christopher Krebs, who served as the United States Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He said much of the threat dates back to Russian efforts to hack the 2016 elections. (wikipedia article)“It had three different components,” Krebs said. “The first was attempts to get into voter registration databases and other systems administering elections. The second was targeting and hacking into political campaigns, the [Democratic National Committee], the Hilary Clinton and the third is this more pernicious, drawn out disinformation campaign that's really rooted in the entirety of Russian information doctrine going back really a century or more.” Krebs said the Russian campaign was intended to destabilize democracy, and not much was done to shore up security systems.“And there were domestic actors that saw the playbook run in 2016 and adapted it to their own measures,” Krebs said.Krebs said he is concerned about continued efforts to falsely claim that President Joe Biden was not elected, as well as continued attacks on election workers. He said death threats are common. “It's part of unfortunately doing business as election workers right now and that is leading to a retreat and exodus from the work force which in turn kind of turns out to be a former of almost voter suppression,” Krebs said.That's because fewer election workers means fewer precincts and longer lines. Krebs said there's also a strategy to radicalize election workers. Barbara Comstock served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in Virginia's former 10th District. The Republican politician is now involved in Issue One and the National Council for Elections Security.  “I am for the first time in my life a single issue voter,” Comstock said. “I've never been a single issue voter. I was a conservative Republican but now my issue is democracy before any other issue. And if you aren't going to respect elections and who wins and who loses, you can't have any other issues before that.” Comstock said she is concerned about candidates who have already declared they will not accept the elections results unless they win. “Those kind of situations are going to repeat themselves around the country,” Comstock said. “We're a 50/50 country. I won my first election by 422 votes.” Comstock said on that night, she knew where the votes were coming in because she was familiar with the polls. She said many with conspiracy theories have never worked an election before. “And these are people who just didn't understand anything about  retail politics,” Comstock said. “They were just people who were preaching to the choir, hung out with everyone who thought the way they did, and had never knocked on a door.”Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, has been studying rumors that circulate online about perceived election fraud.“When somebody believes that their ballot has been invalidated because they were given a sharpie marker at the polls and they remember being a kid in school and being told you can't use a sharpie marker on a scantron and they believe that there's a false plot to steal the election from them because that's kind of where the political climate of the country is at this point,” DiResta said. “Those claims tend to go viral and one of the things we look at at Stanford is how those claims go viral and where and in what communities on the internet.”DiResta said the sharpie argument has come back again in Arizona during the 2022 race. She said she's part of something called the Election Integrity Partnership which is a non-partisan coalition to help groups that want to fight disinformation by crowd-sourcing responses by helping to find the right messenger to convey correct information. “That person who is a trusted counter messenger counter speaks to the people in their communities,” DiResta said. “They don't want to hear Stanford Internet Observatory thinks that your sharpie markers is wrong because who the hell are we? We're ivory tower academics. We have no trust and we have no resonance in that community but the local elections theoretically do because they are members of the community.” Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, said democracies have been under attack from across the world in the past decade. He said a lot of this builds off the stoking of fears of other Americans. “We're now in a situation in this country of all countries where we don't have a romance of  democracy,” Vaidhyanathan said. “We don't have something that moves us to believe deeply in the power of each other, in the shared future that we all have whether we admit or not.”Election Day is now 15 days away. This Wednesday, the two candidates in the Fifth District will meet at Hampden-Sydney College for the first and only campaign forum of the race. Some information here, and more in the next newsletter.You can watch the whole Center for Politics event on YouTube. Other articles for your review:As much as I try, I can't get it all. Here are some recent stories you may be interested in reviewing. * Charlottesville's first climate action plan, Anahita Jafary, NBC29, October 20, 2022* Richmond Fed: Va. gained 8,000 jobs in September, Virginia Business, October 21, 2022* Charlottesville man's lawsuit against University Village tests state condo law, Daily Progress, October 21, 2022* Bob Good visits Albemarle County, CBS19, October 22, 2022 * Public comment period ends Wednesday for proposed transgender policy, WWBT, October 24Concluding notes for the end of #447 Monday will end and Tuesday will begin and I am hopeful that there will be another installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement. There is so much to get through, and I'm grateful for paid subscribers who are helping me attempt to keep the stables clean. Do consider a paid subscription through Substack at either $5 a month, $50 a year or $200 a year.And if you do that, Ting will match your initial payment, making it very likely I'll get to keep doing this for a while. That's my goal, at least. This work is how I exercise my love of democracy, by pointing out the decision points close at hand. I will try to resist saying what I think, because mostly what I think is how I can get this up to a seven-day-a-week publication. There's enough to go round. If you do sign up, Ting will match your initial subscription. And even if you don't sign up for a paid subscription to this newsletter, Ting wants your custom too, and if you sign up through a link in the newsletter you will get free installation, a $75 gift card to the Downtown Mall, and a second month for free. Just enter the promo code COMMUNITY.Did you know this newsletter is also the working script for a podcast? Do sign up in your podcast player, because it's a great way to hear people's voices. There is the occasional music bit from either the Fundamental Grang or Wraki, a chameleon-like blender of sonic stylings. Check them out on Bandcamp.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

California is described as the poster child for woke policies, but Glenn dives into how badly it's falling apart. Glenn and Stu discuss the importance of knowing your local elections as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins to give an update on his campaign. "Truth & Conviction" director Matt Whitaker joins to share the story of Helmuth Hübener, the youngest person to stand up against the Nazi regime. Just the News CEO and editor in chief John Solomon exposes the Election Integrity Partnership's joint effort with the federal government to censor social media posts deemed "misinformation" during the 2020 election. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard joins to explain her departure from the Democratic Party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

THE THESIS: It's not just Silicon Valley that colludes with the government, it's the Mockingbird Media. The GOP has everything they need to legally crush the corrupt media and not attack the First Amendment. There are young Republicans—even young shiny shoes—who might be willing to do that. But, they will need to get around The Party's Pharma Bros. THE SCRIPTURE & SCRIPTURAL RESOURCES: The media could fulfill an important Biblical role. They could be heralds https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/dictionary-of-bible-themes/5335-heraldThey should be truth-tellers, wrapped in gracehttps://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/full-of-grace-and-truth/?ampInstead, they are like dens of vipers: Matthew 12:34“You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.”THE NEWS & COMMENT:How sadly hilarious is it to see disgraced “news” anchor, Brian Williams waxing moralistic about truth-telling and transparency by quoting the correct vision of an atheist man who worshipped man?[AUDIO] - Carl Sagan: “I have a foreboding of an America…when the US is a service & info economy; when nearly all manufacturing have slipped away to other countries; when awesome tech power are in the hands of a very few—no one representing the public interest can grasp the issues.”There are facts as expressed in raw data:September Border Crossings To Set New Record, Internal DHS Data ShowThen, there is the New York Times and what I call The Nooze(™). New York Times Helps Biden Pretend He's Fixing Border Asylum Scam, When He's Literally Making It WorseWith just enough liberal channels to provide a “cover-slap” (like a kiddy shield), the bosses of the Mockingbirds maintain a list of dissidents who practice bad-think. Enemies list? Fed-backed censorship machine targeted 20 news sites; Just the News, New York Post, Fox News, Epoch Times and Breitbart were identified among the "most prominent domains" whose election coverage was cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators.There are young Republicans who might step up to investigate the collusion between supposed competitors in media and their common partners/bosses in government. But, they will have to get that past McCarthy and McConnell, men who serve themselves by serving The Party. WA Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley criticizes Seattle Times, Starbucks, Seahawks[AUDIO] - Here's the ad they want to killThere is precedent for suing and beating advertising based companies for promoting products that cause harm. The “climate catastrophe” is a lie costing people money and killing people. The Mockingbirds clearly collude with government on this lie. [AUDIO] - VP Harris says hurricane resource funds to go to people of color first, sorry whites[AUDIO] - Media Shriek: Climate Change Causing Hurricane Ian's ‘Rapid Intensification'Storms are not intensifying, media is; here I am, rock you with the hurricane dataOf course, the biggest act of collusion—and the most deadly—is the Covid response hoax. Because they are mobbed-up, we will have trouble ahing Pharma (even though the drug for which they got an Emergency Use Authorization has NEVER been used in America), but we can sue the media for spreading their lies. There is precedent for that from the tobacco lawsuits. [AUDIO] - A new movie called “Superspreader” is about a man who spread the word of Jesus Christ during the Covid lockdowns - Sean FoightAre you hiding mass MURDER, FDA? FDA refused to release Pfizer documents for 75 years until judge ordered; and now "FDA Refuses to Release Autopsy Results on People Who Died After COVID Vaccines"; The U.S. FDA said it's barred from releasing the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines, why? There is a way to release confidentially, FDA knows this. Which brings us to this: [AUDIO] - What Woody Harrelson says here sued to be true--if enough people stop buying a product the company will change--but that was before companies and government merged. Think of all the “products” and “services” you don't want, can't stand or cannot afford that government forces you to buy. More on that in Hour Two . . .

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former chief security officer of Yahoo and Facebook. Alex has appeared on the podcast before, but this time, they discussed a new coalition he helped set up called the Election Integrity Partnership—a coalition focused on detecting and mitigating attempts to limit voting or delegitimize election results. Disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. presidential election has already started popping up online, and it's only going to increase as November draws closer. The coalition aims to counter this in real time. So how will it actually work?They also asked Alex for his hot takes on TikTok—the popular video sharing platform facing pressure over concern about influence from the Chinese government. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic are bringing you a conversation with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Alex was last on the show in August to talk about the newly established Election Integrity Partnership, which he helped set up to focus on detecting and mitigating disinformation around the U.S. 2020 election. Well, the election is over! So Alex is back to talk about what the partnership saw, how well the information ecosystem held up and what the landscape looks like as the dust begins to settle. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Isabella Garcia-Camargo works at Stanford’s Internet Observatory as a research analyst and the project manager for two amazing projects: the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project. https://twitter.com/igarciacamargo https://www.viralityproject.org/ https://patreon.com/rhyslindmark https://twitter.com/RhysLindmark

The first interview is with Ryan Calo, professor at the University of Washington School of Law, founding co-director of the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab and the UW Center for an Informed Public. The interview took place shortly after the European Commission announced new proposed regulations on artificial intelligence.  The second conversation is with Kate Starbird and Renée Diresta. Kate Starbird is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) and Director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation (emCOMP) Laboratory and a co-founder of the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, which formed in 2019 around a shared mission of resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society, and strengthening democratic discourse. Renée DiResta is the Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. The two were part of a unique collaboration to address disinformation in the 2020 US election cycle. Ahead of the vote, The Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) and the disinformation detection firm Graphika teamed up to create the Election Integrity Partnership. With the aim of defending the 2020 election against voting-related mis- and disinformation, the partnership sought to bridge the gap between government and civil society, and strengthen platform standards for combating election-related misinformation.

"Extreme opinions inspire loyalty among a minority that is ultimately more valuable than the unenthusiastic approval of the whole crowd. These are unhealthy incentives. But they are powerful incentives. Readers always, always tell me that they just want to see the academic posts, just the serious posts. What they don’t seem to realize is that if I had stuck to writing just those thoughtful essays they wouldn’t have heard of me in the first place." - Fredrik deBoer   How did the problem of misinformation and disinformation get so bad? Belonging is stronger than facts. How do we fix it?   Election Integrity Partnership report (includes six page summary and option to download full report)  - https://www.eipartnership.net/report   Article with intro quote from Renee DiResta - https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/   Infographic on how narratives spread online (from EIP) - https://i.imgur.com/QA00Yfz.png   Article detailing the mail dumping events in Greenville, Wisconsin by Renee DiResta - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/right-wing-propagandists-were-doing-something-unique/618267/   Article explaining why belonging is stronger than facts by Zeynep Tufekci - https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/14/240325/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/   Article on why crowds are powerful by Renee DiResta - https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/09/15/crowds-and-technology/   News that Facebook is changing the way it recommends groups - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-crack-groups-break-rules-rcna435   Timeline infographic from the EIP that shows what tech platforms did to stem misinformation leading up to the election - https://i.imgur.com/iGLGKHB.png   More information on the The Redirect Method - https://redirectmethod.org/   Article on the rise of "content cartels" and their collaboration with one another by Evelyn Douek - https://knightcolumbia.org/content/the-rise-of-content-cartels   Freddie DeBoer blog post on why censoring people isn't the answer - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-cant-censor-away-extremism-or   Email me at podofideas@gmail.com

Renée DiResta is research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a multi-disciplinary center that focuses on abuses of information technology, particularly social media. She's an expert in the role technology platforms and their “curatorial” algorithms play in the rise and spread of misinformation and disinformation.Fresh off an intense period keeping watch over the 2020 U.S. elections for disinformation as part of the Election Integrity Partnership, DiResta says the campaign became one of the most closely observed political dramas in American history.She says that whether it comes from the top down or the bottom up, bad information can be spotted and beaten, but overcoming falsehoods in the future will require vigilance and a commitment to the truth. She explains more on Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast, with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

In this excerpt from the 2020 Election Debrief with the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Kelly Born introduces Alex Stamos and his work on the Election Integrity Partnership. The full video of the event can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2k62-JCAgE

Washington Post has two stories on Trump and Social Media"A study released Thursday by the Election Integrity Partnership found that just 20 conservative, pro-Trump Twitter accounts — including the president's own @realDonaldTrump — were the original source of one-fifth of retweets pushing misleading narratives about voting.A recent Cornell University study, meanwhile, concluded that Trump was also the “largest driver” of misinformation in the public conversation about the coronavirus during the first half of 2020. The researchers found that nearly 40 percent of articles containing misinformation about the virus mentioned him, including articles about false cures and blaming China for the disease."Meanwhile, a report by the Post shows that quote: "In the final months of the presidential campaign, prominent associates of President Trump and conservative groups with vast online followings have flirted with, and frequently crossed, the boundaries set forth by Facebook about the repeated sharing of misinformation."From a pro-Trump super PAC to the president's eldest son, however, these users have received few penalties, according to an examination of several months of posts and ad spending, as well as internal company documents. In certain cases, their accounts have been protected against more severe enforcement because of concern about the perception of anti-conservative bias, said current and former Facebook employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.Metadata Laws reviewCam Wilson, writing for Gizmodo, says "Australia's metadata retentions laws are making it too easy for too many people to access Australian's data without warrant, according to a review of the controversial scheme.""The Committee recommended removing loopholes and updating definitions to limit access of metadata in Australia.When the law was first passed in 2015, there were just 21 agencies who were allowed to access it -- a number that Peter Dutton wouldn't mind increasing.But since then, more than 100 agencies — including local councils and even the RSPCA — have accessed the data, sometimes for minor legal offences.This is due to a loophole that allowed data to be released to more agencies if it was authorised.In response, the Committee suggested setting a "serious offence" threshold for accessing the data under the scheme."Rumour: Government considering watering down it's Facebook/Google Regulations The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting "the federal government is considering weakening new rules designed to force Google and Facebook to pay news publishers, following fierce lobbying and threats from the tech giants to leave the Australian market."Google and Facebook have aggressively lobbied the government to change core elements of a draft news media bargaining code being created by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that both companies have described as "unworkable". The new code will force the tech giants to strike commercial deals with news publishers."

James talks to Prof. Jevin West, Director Center for an Informed Public at UW & Morgan Wack of Election Integrity Partnership about social media and misinformation.