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This Week's Updates:
Misleading Voting Ads Lurk in Google Search Results: On Monday, CfA's Tech Transparency Project (TTP) released a report on the scammy, misleading advertisements that Google served in searches related to voting. Some ads prompted users to pay for freely-available information about their voter registration, while others trapped users in an endless cycle of third-party search engines, which provided low-quality results alongside a barrage of additional ads.
Google promised to tackle misleading ads surrounding elections back in 2020, but another TTP report demonstrated that they hadn't been successful. It is disappointing that, two years later, Google still isn't adequately protecting its users from scammers set on exploiting people's desires to become better informed.
Twitter Grapples with Misinformation, FTC Compliance: Under new management and with sharply reduced staff, Twitter struggled to crack down on misinformation ahead of the midterms. And their troubles didn't stop there. Shortly after the election, reporting from The Vergerevealed that Twitter had lost top legal staff in charge of FTC compliance, leaving engineers to "self-certify" their work.
Ballot Measures a Boost for Transparency: This was easy to miss in the chaos of Election Day, but multiple states passed ballot measures designed to strengthen accountability and crack down on campaign finance loopholes. In Michigan, elected officials will be required to submit financial disclosures containing information about assets, liabilities, income, positions held, and more (leaving Idaho as the only state where lawmakers can keep that information private). Meanwhile, Arizona voters succeeded in establishing new transparency standards for dark money groups, which must now reveal the identities of their top donors.
Elon Musk’s $8 Checkmarks Prove to Be a Twitter Misinformation Disaster On Twitter, a blue checkmark (once a sign of a user's authenticity) can now be bought for a mere $8 a month. Trolls and spoof accounts appeared almost immediately, and while Twitter staff implemented a number of quick fixes, it's undeniable that content moderation has slowed.
