Scholars from Stanford University put forward a comprehensive strategy for what needs to be done to protect the integrity and independence of U.S. elections, with a keen focus on the upcoming presidential campaign in 2020. The report draws on findings that emerged from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian […] Read more »
‘Screen Time’ Is Over
… Consider what a person can do in just the time it takes to wait for a bus: text, watch a comedy skit, play a video game, buy concert tickets, take five selfies, each with a different set of cartoon ears. Learning how that behavior shapes an individual’s life experience […] Read more »
Why the Internet Is So Polarized, Extreme, and Screamy
… Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are many things at once—a modern railroad crossed with a modern telephone network, mixed with a modern phone book, on top of a modern Borgesian library. Above all, social media are a mechanism for allowing people to find like-minded individuals and to […] Read more »
How the news took over reality
… In recent years, there has been enormous concern about the time we spend on our web-connected devices and what that might be doing to our brains. But a related psychological shift has gone largely unremarked: the way that, for a certain segment of the population, the news has come […] Read more »
How to avoid an election meltdown in 2020: Improve voter registration database security and monitoring
One of the most shocking parts of the Mueller report details the widespread efforts by Russian hackers to attack American election infrastructure in 2016. Specifically, the report presents evidence that the Russian intelligence (GRU) targeted state and local election administration systems, that they have infiltrated the computer network of the […] Read more »
Russia Is Targeting Europe’s Elections. So Are Far-Right Copycats.
Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts linked to Russia or far-right groups is spreading disinformation, encouraging discord and amplifying distrust in the centrist parties that have governed for decades. European Union investigators, academics and advocacy groups say […] Read more »