Disinfo ≠ censorship

Plus more on platform policy rollbacks, rebuilding the American dream in higher education, and the Civic Info Handbook

This week we’ve been commenting on a range of public discussions and issues. A quick round-up of highlights for your light summer weekend reading:

“This platform rollback stems broadly from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which gave other platforms a green light to drop electoral and public health protections.” Daniel Kreiss and Bridget Barrett’s work on how platforms are reversing their political speech policies was featured in Thomas Edsall’s column in The New York Times.

“The order, she said, followed other efforts, largely from Republicans, that are ‘part of an organized campaign pushing back on the idea of disinformation as a whole.’” Alice Marwick spoke with both The New York Times and The Hill about the conspiracy narrative that disinformation research is a code or cover for government suppression of speech.

“There is also a long-term challenge which is, how will higher education handle the lack of vision about its role in this version of the American dream that the Supreme Court has laid before us? And then I think there’s a challenge for us as a nation. That is, who will write the new rules for a forward-facing American dream?” Tressie McMillan Cottom discusses recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and student loans for The New York Times’s audio team.

“These insights when brought together in a format like the handbook, make it possible to imagine countering this information in a different way and getting past fact checks and getting past feeling like it’s a game of whack-a-mole.” Adrienne Goldstein and I sat down with Justin Hendrix of Tech Policy Press to talk about the Civic Information Handbook.

“The safety of children online has become perhaps the most pressing concern in technology regulation. Federal and state legislators are considering dozens of new bills addressing children’s online safety… what is new is the push to go beyond requiring users to submit their birthday and to employ more impermeable methods, such as submitting proof of age via a government-issued ID or use of artificial intelligence.” Scott Babwah Brennen and Matt Perault wrote about age verification trade-offs for Tech Policy Press.

Coming soon

October 16 at CITAP: Misinformation and Marginalization Symposium. Registration information coming soon!

October 18 at AoIR: Alice Marwick, Yvonne Eadon, and Rachel Kuo are among the co-organizers of an AoIR preconference on future of conspiracy.

October 22 at the Annenberg Public Policy Center: The Post-API Conference. Proposals due July 17.