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This Week's Updates:
TTP and ADL Release New Report on White Supremacist Social Media Fundraising
Yesterday, CfA’s Tech Transparency Project (TTP), along with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published a report on the that ways that social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and X are helping antisemitic and white supremacist organizations raise funds and sell merchandise, despite their own policies against hate and extremism. In some cases, the platforms even allowed white supremacist groups to set up “show now” or “donate here” buttons, which are designed to catch a users’ attention. On Facebook, for instance, researchers found multiple examples of racist and antisemitic pages that were linked to websites selling merchandise, including one which advertised copies of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Despite using easily-recognized language and symbols, the white supremacist content identified in this report seems to have largely evaded the automatic moderation systems touted by platforms. Meta and YouTube both removed most of the content highlighted in the report after it was shared with them prior to publication, while X responded later and removed at least one account. YouTube said it would continue to investigate fixes for its review process, while Meta did not address the wider issues that the report identified.
This report is part of series conducted by TTP and ADL, which investigates how social media platforms have both profited from online hate and enabled its spread.
A Leonard Leo Ethics Update
This week, Federalist Society powerbroker Leonard Leo declared that he would not be complying with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoena regarding the lavish gifts and vacations he helped coordinate for Supreme Court justices, which ProPublica exposed earlier this year. The subpoena is unlikely to be enforced by the Senate because it needs 60 votes to proceed, but there are other avenues for holding Leo accountable. In addition to apparently facilitating potentially inappropriate transactions between justices and wealthy donors with business before the Court, Leo is known to have played a considerable role in President Trump’s judicial selection process – a role which earned him favor from the conversative donor class.
Earlier this year, CfA filed complaints with both the IRS and the D.C. Attorney General’s Office asking them to investigate a series of nonprofits associated with Leo that appear to have made large payments to his businesses. Around the time of said payments, Leo’s personal spending habits appears to have abruptly shifted, and he began making large charitable donations and purchasing vacation homes. Not long after CfA’s complaint, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb opened an investigation into the matter. Now, a tax filing obtained by the watchdog organization Accountable.US has revealed that Leo’s nonprofit 85 Fund paid $21 million to one of Leo’s businesses in 2022.
Researchers use AI to Identify Spike in E-Cigarette Content on Instagram and TikTok
Earlier this month, a paper published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research demonstrated a process for identifying e-cigarette products in social media posts, using image-based computer vision models (a form of AI. Notably, the study tested the model on “microinfluencers”, which researchers defined as accounts with high engagement rates and over 1,000 followers. After feeding sample images into a database, the researchers assessed tens of thousands of posts created by these especially engaging accounts between 2019 and 2022. The model found that, during this period, the number of microinfluencer posts containing tobacco products surged from 786 to 4,425. Researchers also noted that very few posts contained FDA-mandated nicotine warning labels, meaning that users are being shown content from influencers without adequate disclosures.
In 2019, both the FDA and the FTC warned e-cigarette companies that they were breaking the law by paying influencers to promote their products without nicotine warning statements. More recently, the FTC cracked down on several wellness influencers for failing to adequately disclose their connections to beverage trade associations, which paid them to make statements about the safety of artificial sweeteners. Now, the tobacco industry’s well-documented turn to influencer marketing could be an attempt to evade these restrictions. One company, Hestia, has simply sent free cartons of cigarettes to semi-famous individuals, with the hope that their products will be smoked on-camera. This latest report on the growth of e-cigarette content should serve as a warning to regulators that the tobacco industry may be benefitting from microinfluencers – and that enforcement is worth pursuing.
