The Tech Policy Press Podcast

A little more than a year ago, in the first article announcing the release of the Facebook Files, the documents brought out of the company by whistleblower Frances Haugen, the Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Horwitz reported on Cross Check, a Facebook system that “exempted high-profile users from some or all” of the platform’s rules. The program shields millions of elites from normal content moderation enforcement. While the existence of such a program was known, its scale was and perhaps still is shocking.Following the Journal’s reporting and subsequent concern in the public, Facebook (now Meta) President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg announced the company would request a policy advisory opinion from its independent Oversight Board. 14 months later, the Oversight Board has completed its review and published its opinion. To talk more about the opinion, the Cross Check system and the problem of content moderation more generally, I’m joined with one member of the Oversight Board, Nighat Dad, a lawyer from Pakistan and founder of the Digital Rights Foundation; and one outside observer who answered the board’s call for opinions about the Cross Check system, R Street Institute senior fellow and University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center distinguished research fellow Chris Riley.

Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protests in multiple cities. The unrest and anti-government sentiment was perhaps the most pronounced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And while these events gave Western observers an opportunity to grapple with the complexity of Chinese politics, generational and regional differences in the views of the population, and ultimately how the authoritarian government responds to public pressure, it also gave us a chance to see how the Chinese censorship and surveillance apparatus operates. This week’s Tech Policy Press podcast comes in two parts. In both, we’ll hear from reporters covering the intersection of China and technology. This is the second part, and it features a conversation with two individuals covering China for the New York Times, Paul Mozur and Muyi Xiao. In their collaborative coverage they have mixed open source visual investigations methods with traditional reporting to get a sense of the protests and the state’s response. 

Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protests in multiple cities. The unrest and anti-government sentiment was perhaps the most pronounced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And while these events gave Western observers an opportunity to grapple with the complexity of Chinese politics, generational and regional differences in the views of the population, and ultimately how the authoritarian government responds to public pressure, it also gave us a chance to see how the Chinese censorship and surveillance apparatus operates. This week’s Tech Policy Press podcast comes in two parts. In both, we’ll hear from reporters covering the intersection of China and technology. This is the first part, and it features a conversation with Liza Lin, a Reporter at The Wall Street Journal. She covers Asia technology news for the Journal from Singapore. Before that she was the paper’s China correspondent, based in Shanghai. She was part of a team at the Journal to named as Pulitzer Finalists for the International Reporting category in 2021 for coverage of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and with other Journal reporters won the Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting in 2018 for a series of stories on China's Surveillance state. She’s co-author of a book on that subject titled Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control, with Josh Chin. 

On Friday, Elon Musk announced via tweet that documents related to Twitter’s decision to intervene in the propagation of an October 2020 story in the New York Post about then candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, would be made public. The incident caused a furor at the time, with some Republicans and supporters of former President Donald Trump insinuating that it was proof that social media firms are biased against conservative interests. Some even maintain that the actions of Twitter and Facebook with regard to this particular New York Post story may have had some impact on the outcome of the election, as far-fetched as that might be. Today, we’ll hear two voices on the disclosures. The first is David Ingram, who covers tech for NBC News and will walk us through what happened. And the second is Mike Masnick, the editor of the influential site Tech Dirt, who offers his first thoughts on the disclosures, and what they portend for the future of Twitter under Elon Musk.

For this episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast, I had the chance to speak to Chris Anderson, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at the University of Milan who is leading a course on tech manifestos and their evolution, inviting his students to dissect the language for what it can tell us about politics and power. Documents such as A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and A Manifesto for Cyborgs have given way to more vacuous statements from billionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook manifesto, Building Global Community. These days a lot of Silicon Valley’s leaders don’t have much in the way of ideas, but they do have a lot of money, so either way they can push whatever agenda they may have on the rest of us. From promises of abundance delivered by artificial intelligence, to a 'global community' convened on social media platforms, to reimagined economies or even a new world order built on the blockchain, tech manifestos remain important, since they often signify large amounts of capital are about to be deployed to try to manifest someone's new vision.

By all accounts, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is not going well. And yet many have the real sense that something important may be lost if the platform collapses, or if there is a substantial migration away from it to alternatives like Mastodon, the open source, decentralized platform that has grown from three hundred thousand monthly active users to nearly two million since Musk bought Twitter. In this episode, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix had the chance to discuss Musk’s takeover with Dr. Johnathan Flowers, and to learn more about some of the exclusive norms he’s observed that may create obstacles to communities of color when contemplating the switch to Mastodon.

Today we’re going to hear from the editor of-- and two authors included in-- a book of essays about how particular bits of software have changed the world in different ways, the just-published "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World from Princeton University Press. The book is at once delightful and enlightening, revealing how technology interacts with people and society in both good and bad ways, and how important and long lasting the decisions we take when designing software and systems can be on the world. This episode features:Torie Bosch, the editor of Future Tense, a collaborative project of Slate magazine, New America, and Arizona State University, and the editor of the book;Meredith Broussard, an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest TechnologyCharlton McIlwain, Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development at New York University and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Media reports suggest that large swathes of employees at Twitter have resigned after the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, issued a kind of ultimatum asking them to commit to "long hours at high intensity" to build “Twitter 2.0.” Last night, according to an internal Twitter email shared with CNN, employees who decided to stay at the company received an email that said the company's offices will be temporarily closed and badge access will be restricted through Monday. Whether the platform will remain functional with so many core engineering and other crucial teams decimated is an open question. To talk more about Twitter, Musk, and what is potentially lost, Justin Hendrix spoke to Dr. Meredith Clark, whose research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power. She’s leading a project to archive Black Twitter, as part of a larger project to archive the Black web. And, she’s the author of a forthcoming book on Black Twitter.

According to the BBC, to date at least 348 Iranian protesters have been killed and nearly 16,000 arrested in women-led protests that erupted three months ago after the death Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in custody after being detained by morality police for allegedly breaking the strict rules on the wearing of hijabs.One way the regime has responded to these antigovernment protests is to block access to the internet, independent news sites and social media and communication platforms. To talk more about how these tactics are being applied in Iran and around the world, and what policymakers in democratic countries can do to help dissidents on the ground, I spoke to two experts on digital and human rights:Yasmin Green, CEO of Jigsaw and author of a recent piece in Wired on Iran's internet blackoutsKian Vesteinsson, Senior Research Analyst for Technology and Democracy at Freedom House, one of the authors of the 12th annual Internet Freedom Report

Voting in the U.S. midterm elections closed on Tuesday, and as of Sunday morning, November 13, Democrats secured another majority in the Senate. But ballots are still being counted in key races that will determine which party controls the House.  It is clear, however, that the margins determining leadership in both chambers will be extremely small. In order to explore how the elections may impact the legislative debate over tech policy issues, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix spoke with three experts from civil society groups that regularly engage with lawmakers to find what scenarios and considerations are front of mind, even as we wait for the final tally:Emma Llansó, Director of the Free Expression Project, Center for Democracy and TechnologyYosef Getachew, Director of the Media and Democracy Program, Common CauseMatt Wood, Vice President of Policy and General Counsel, Free Press

This episode features a discussion with Brandi Collins-Dexter, the author of the new book BLACK SKINHEAD: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. Brandi is both an academic and a civil rights activist in the fight for media and tech justice, and her book is a rollercoaster ride through those issues through culture and music and politics. Part media and cultural criticism, part memoir, and part warning, the book takes us to the fringes of Black communities and tries to make sense of our political moment.

As the U.S. midterm elections approach next week, there is a renewed focus on understanding the spending on and claims made in political advertising in digital channels, particularly on social media. But what is going on across the web, beyond the social media platforms? A recent report from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center on Technology Policy found that as a result of restrictions on political ads instituted by major platforms ahead of the 2020 elections, political advertisers are increasingly turning to political advertising on other platforms. Programmatic advertising accounts for a substantial and increasing share of political advertising, they say, and more attention needs to be paid to this complex and confusing ecosystem of companies- large and small- that serve up ads on websites, apps, streaming services, and other digitally connected devices. This episode features a discussion with the report's authors, J. Scott Babwah Brennen & Matt Perault.

Danielle Citron is the inaugural Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches and writes about information privacy, free expression and civil rights. She is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age, and in 2019 she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on cyberstalking and intimate privacy. Her latest book, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age, published by W.W. Norton and Penguin Vintage UK, was released this month.

In this episode of the podcast, we present two segments that explore how the combination of media, platforms, politics and people play out in Latino communities in the U.S., particularly at crucial moments for democracy, such as at election time. The first segment is with individuals who are leading efforts to understand and confront mis- and disinformation targeting Latino communities:Roberta Braga, Director of Counter-Disinformation Strategies at EquisJaime Longoria, Manager of Research and Training for the Disinfo Defense League at Media Democracy Fund.And the second segment is a discussion with two researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who spent the summer talking specifically to Latino users of WhatsApp about how the political discourse plays out in their communities on that widely used messaging app, and wrote about it for Tech Policy Press as part of a special series of essays on race, ethnicity, technology and elections:Inga Kristina Trauthig, Ph.D., Research Manager of the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at AustinKayo Mimizuka, Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Media Engagement and a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin.

In recent episodes of this podcast we’ve explored the policies and practices of the social media platforms with regard to elections. In this week’s episode, we’ll hear two segments on this theme. First, an interview with Daniel Kriess, an Associate Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a principal researcher at the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. With Ph.D candidate Erik Brooks, Daniel is the author of Looking to the Midterms: The State of Platform Policies on U.S. Political Speech, a recent post at Tech Policy Press.In the second segment, we zoom out and discuss the trajectory of tech company policies on elections over the last twenty six years with Katie Harbath and Collier Fernekes, authors of a recent report for the Bipartisan Policy Center that was based on an archive of public announcements made by the firms. Katie is a former Facebook public policy director and now leads Anchor Change, a consultancy she started after leaving the tech company. Collier is a research analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Earlier this year, an investigation published in the New Yorker by Ronan Farrow suggested that commercial spyware called Pegasus, developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, is being used by governments in at least 45 countries around the world, including by U.S. and European intelligence and law enforcement services. The technology permits government agents to gain access to the contents of cell phones by exploiting flaws in device operating systems and software. In this episode, we hear from three individuals in Bangkok, Thailand; pro-democracy activists who have seen their community targeted with Pegasus, part of a range of activities intended to discourage dissent and limit free expression:Yingcheep Atchanont, a program manager at iLawRuchapong Chamjirachaikul, advocacy officer at iLawDarika Bamrungchok, a program manager at Thai Netizen

Regular users of social media platforms are well aware that they often produce toxic discourse. Scholars continue to produce results that bring clarity to the mechanisms by which digital and social media exacerbate partisan and identity-based conflict. A better understanding is crucial for keying in on what platforms should be held responsible for, devising better policy, and potentially designing solutions. A new peer-reviewed paper from Petter Törnberg, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, contributes to this understanding by developing a computational model that “suggests that digital media polarize through partisan sorting, creating a maelstrom in which more and more identities, beliefs, and cultural preferences become drawn into an all-encompassing societal division.” 

Last week, President Joe Biden’s White House published a 73-page document produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People. The White House says that “among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public.“ The Blueprint, then, is “a guide for a society that protects all people from these threats—and uses technologies in ways that reinforce our highest values.”To discuss the blueprint and the broader context into which it was introduced, Tech Policy Press spoke to one expert who had a hand in writing it, and one external observer who follows these issues closely. Joining the discussion are Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computer science and data science and director of the Data Science Initiative at Brown University, who recently completed a 15-month appointment as an advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Alex Engler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he researches algorithms and policy.

Some of the most controversial debates over speech and content moderation on social media platforms are now due for consideration in the Supreme Court. Last month, Florida’s attorney general asked the Court to decide whether states have the right to regulate how social media companies moderate content on their services, after Florida and Texas passed laws that challenge practices of tech firms that lawmakers there regard as anti-democratic. And this month, the Supreme Court decided to hear two cases that will have bearing on interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally provides platforms with immunity from legal liability for user generated content. To talk about these various developments, Justin Hendrix spoke to three people covering these issues closely. Guests include:Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and the Director of Our Better WebJameel Jaffer, Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia UniversityWill Oremus, a news analysis writer focused on tech and society at The Washington PostThe guests also made time to discuss Elon Musk’s on-again, off-again pursuit of Twitter, which appears to be on-again, and how his potential acquisition of the company relates to the broader debate around speech and moderation issues. 

On September 21, Justin Hendrix moderated a panel discussion for the McCourt Institute at a pre-conference spotlight session on digital governance ahead of Unfinished Live, a conference on tech and society issues hosted at The Shed in New York City. The topic given by the organizers was Digital Governance and the State of Democracy: Why Does it Matter? Panelist included:  Erik Brynjolfsson, the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy LabMaggie Little, Director of the Ethics Lab at Georgetown UniversityEli Pariser, Co-Director of New_Public, an initiative focused on developing better digital public spaces; andEric Salobir, the Chair of the Executive Committee, Human Technology Foundation, a research and action network placing the human being at the heart of technology development

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases that concern whether tech platforms can be held liable for user generated content, as well as for content that users see because of a platform’s algorithmic systems. In deciding to hear Gonzalez et al vs. Google and Taamneh, Mehier et al vs Twitter et al, the Court will broach the question of whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be narrowed, and whether it still immunizes the owners of websites when that algorithmically “recommend” third-party content into a user’s feed.To learn more about these cases and the potential implications of the Court’s decision, Tech Policy Press spoke to an expert on tech and internet law: Anupam Chander, the Scott K. Ginsberg Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown University.

The former President and his supporters continue to sow doubt in the outcome of the 2020 election, and in the election system more generally. Now, with the the 2022 midterm elections just a month away, a number of observers are perplexed at the posture of large social media platforms, where false claims continue to fester and efforts to mitigate misinformation always seem puny compared to the scale of the problem. This week we hear from three experts who are following these issues closely: Nora Benavidez, Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights, Free PressPaul Barrett, Deputy Director, Center for Business & Human Rights, NYU Stern School of BusinessMike Caulfield, Research Scientist at the Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

In a new paper-- "The uselessness of AI Ethics," published in the online edition of the journal AI and Ethics, Luke Munn, points to over 80 lists of AI ethical principles produced by governments, corporations, research groups and professional societies. In is paper, he expresses concern that most of these ethics statements deal in vague terms and lack any kind of actual enforcement. But in critiquing attempts at defining an ethical code for AI, he is not suggesting we let the technology develop in a technical vacuum. On the contrary, he wants us to think more deeper about the potential problems in deploying AI. In this episode of the podcast, Mark Hansen, Director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and a professor at Columbia Journalism School, speaks with Munn about his ideas, which are part of a growing movement that sees the problems with AI less in purely computational terms, but instead as an area of social science.

As content moderation and other trust and safety issues have been, to put it mildly, at the fore of tech concerns over the last few years, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at the various conferences, professional organizations and research communities that have emerged to address this broad and challenging set of subjects. To get a sense of where trust and safety is as a field at this moment in time, Tech Policy Press spoke to three individuals involved in it, each coming from different perspectives:Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory and a leader in the community of academic researchers studying trust and safety issues as co-editor of the recently launched Journal of Online Trust and SafetyDavid Sullivan, the leader of an industry funded consortium focused on developing best practices for the field called the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership; andJeff Allen, co-founder and chief research officer of an independent membership organization of trust and safety professionals, the Integrity Institute.

A series of reports published this summer by Article 19- working with UNESCO and with funding from the European Union- take an in-depth look at how social media platforms operate in a global context, documenting a lack of understanding of cultural nuances and local languages, insufficient mechanisms for users and civil society groups to engage on moderation, a lack of transparency, and a power asymmetry that leaves local actors feeling powerless.To learn more about the project and its recommendations, in this episode we hear from four individuals involved in the drafting of the reports:Pierre François Docquir, Head of Media Freedom, ARTICLE 19, who led the project globally;Roberta Taveri, an ARTICLE 19 program officer who played a role in delivering the research on Bosnia and Herzegovina;Catherine Muya from ARTICLE 19 East Africa, who focused on Kenya, andSherly Haristya, PhD, an independent researcher who conducted the research on Indonesia.

In this episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast, we’re going to explore how law enforcement and other government agencies in the United States acquire data drawn from commercial data brokers for investigative purposes, and the questions raised by these practices.This is an issue that is still at question in the nation’s courts and is under active discussion on Capitol Hill. For instance, this summer the House Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing it titled Digital Dragnets: Examining the Government's Access to Your Personal Data. At the hearing, experts witnesses testified that government agencies at all levels, including federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as state and local law enforcement are collecting a massive amount of personal data on American citizens, sidestepping constitutional protections against unwarranted search and seizure provided in the Fourth Amendment. The hearing included discussion of the proposed Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, which would restrict government entities from engaging in such practices.But while the courts and Congress deliberate, government agencies are acquiring this information from software providers, including one such firm that was the subject of a recent investigative report from the Associated Press titled Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget. Today, I’m joined by the two reporters who spent months trying to understand how a little known company in Virginia goes about acquiring commercially available data and selling it to police in departments across the country- global investigative journalist Garance Burke and national investigative reporter Jason Dearen.

it is well understood that for all the shortcomings of the tech platforms’ approach to elections in this country, it’s much worse abroad, where often language and cultural barriers combine with fewer political and business incentives for firms such as Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to properly resource elections. Now, just weeks before a general election in Brazil that will decide that country’s next President, there are signs that disinformation is rife on the platforms, with many observers concerned about the potential for violence. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to two experts involved in efforts to identify and mitigate disinformation in Brazil: João Brant, coordinator of desinformante, an initiative of the nonprofit Ponteio Comunicação, Information and Culture and the Instituto Cultura e Democracia in Brazil, and Flora Rebello Arduini, Campaigns Director at SumOfUs, a global activist community that seeks to curb the growing power of corporations.

A common theme on this podcast is the future, and the visions of the future that a certain set of Silicon Valley tech and venture accelerationists are working hard to advance. Today we’re going to hear from author and scholar Douglas Rushkoff about his latest book-Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires- which lampoons and deflates these characters, offering instead a humanist approach to defining the future by how we comport ourselves in the present.

This episode features a conversation with Bloomberg journalist Mark Bergen. He’s the author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination, from Viking. This is a business book, a history, and a contemplation of YouTube’s role in society all in one. Bergen explores how the company evolved into the massive juggernaut it is today, and along the way gives insight into concerning phenomena that we’ve discussed on this podcast in the past, such as the relationship between YouTube and violent extremism, misogyny, racism, white nationalism and a variety of other ills. The book pulls the curtain back on the internal dynamics and decisions that bring us to today. And it asks us to contemplate whether anyone- from Google’s leadership to regulators in any of the world’s governments- can truly get their heads or hands around YouTube. 

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research initiative of the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability, is focused on holding major tech companies to account– including Meta, the company that operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. For instance, TTP collected what it calls Facebook’s ‘broken promises’ on issues ranging from bullying and harassment to fraud and deception to violence and incitement. A new report released this month, Facebook Profits from White Supremacist Groups, says the company is “failing to remove white supremacist groups and is often profiting from searches for them on its platform,” exposing how it “fosters and benefits from domestic extremism.” To hear more about the findings in the report, Tech Policy Press spoke to Katie Paul, TTP’s Director.

In last Sunday’s podcast, I promised an occasional series of discussions on the relationship between social media, message apps and election mis- and disinformation. In today’s show, I’m joined by two guests who just did a deep dive into the issue, producing a 'score card' that compares the policies and performance of the tech companies on multiple dimensions for New America’s Open Technology Institute:Spandana (Spandi) Singh, a policy analyst at New America's Open Technology Institute, andQuinn Anex-Ries, a PhD candidate in American Studies at USC and an intern with the Open Technology Institute this summer.Their findings are summarized in a report, Misleading Information and the Midterms: How Platforms are Addressing Misinformation and Disinformation Ahead of the 2022 U.S. Elections. 

A little more than a year ago, a coalition of multidisciplinary researchers at Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia set out to crowd source ideas to address the political divide in what was dubbed the Strengthening Democracy Challenge. “Anti-democratic attitudes and support for political violence are at alarming levels in the US," said Robb Willer, Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab and Professor of Sociology at Stanford, at the time of the announcement. "We view this project as a chance to identify efficacious interventions, and also to deepen our understanding of the forces shaping these political sentiments.”After reviewing more than 250 submissions from researchers, activists and others, the research coalition selected 25 interventions it deemed most promising to test against one another in an "experimental tournament" utilizing a sample of 31,000 U.S. adults. To learn more about the challenge, some of the promising projects that emerged from it, and whether tech platforms may play a role in efforts to address polarization, I spoke to Willer and his colleague, Jan Gerrit Voelkel, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University and also a member of the Polarization and Social Change Lab.

With the U.S. midterm election cycle about to kick into high gear, social media platforms are announcing updates to their civic integrity policies and approaches to countering election mis- and disinformation.In this week's podcast, we hear from election administrators themselves about the impact of election misinformation. This is the first in an occasional series Tech Policy Press will publish this fall on social media and election integrity. This episode draws audio from a panel discussion hosted by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on August 11, 2022, that took place on the occasion of the publication of a majority staff report on the problem of election disinformation.