Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a roundup of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.
Robocall convicts reportedly launch AI venture
A new Politico report says Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, the right-wingers who pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with a racist robocall scheme in 2020, are the pseudonymous operators of a new business venture that deploys artificial intelligence to help companies lobby politicians.
Read the wild story at Politico.
Right-wing reading made easy
A former Google employee has debuted an AI-enabled tool that allows you to browse through Project 2025 according to topics of interest — which makes learning about what far-right Republicans intend for a second Trump term far easier.
Check it out here.
Trump’s threat to Zuck
In a new book credited to Donald Trump, the former president warns Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that he’d “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he does anything “illegal” to influence the 2024 presidential election. Trump has falsely alleged for years that Zuckerberg put his thumb on the scale in 2020 by making donations to states to help them carry out their electoral processes during the pandemic. The Facebook founder recently said that he won’t be making such donations this year.
Read more at The Associated Press.
Zuckerberg’s g[r]ift
Relatedly, check out my post on Zuckerberg’s “gift” to Republicans: his recent willingness to peddle their bogus claims that his social media platforms have been used to disadvantage conservatives.
Read more at MSNBC.
Social media stats in the shadows
Axios published a report on the ways that social media sites have made it harder for people to measure how news is consumed on their platforms — instead of transparency, the companies are “hoarding the [engagement] data to avoid scrutiny over how their algorithms work.”
Read more at Axios.
What Silicon Valley VCs want
Silicon Valley venture capitalists supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ candidacy have identified some of their top priorities, including abortion rights and policies that they say will promote innovation in the tech world.
Read more at USA Today.
Jocelyn Benson goes at Elon Musk
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joined PBS to discuss the upcoming election, and the Democrat took X owner Elon Musk to task for spreading “unsourced or easily debunkable information,” such as the false claim that migrants are being brought into the country to vote illegally.
Check out the full interview at PBS.
Elon gets X’d out in Brazil
My MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim wrote a post on Brazil’s Supreme Court upholding a ban on Musk’s social media platform over his refusal to name a legal representative for X in the country. Musk has acquiesced to some truly repressive governments as the company’s leader, and his refusal to play ball with Brazil seems like a political fight with the country after Brazilians voted to oust Jair Bolsonaro — the “Trump of the Tropics” — as president.
Read more at MSNBC.
More foreign manipulation
The Chinese government is running an influence operation designed to manipulate American voters in the lead-up to the U.S. elections this fall, according to a new report from NPR. The operation involves inauthentic social media accounts and AI technology deployed to sow division.
Read more at NPR.
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