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U.S. stops helping Big Tech spot foreign meddling amid GOP legal threats

www.washingtonpost.com /technology/2023/11/30/biden-foreign-disinformation-social-media-election-interference/

The federal government is no longer warning Meta about foreign influence campaigns, a shift that comes amid a legal campaign against the Biden administration’s communication with tech platforms.

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  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The U.S. federal government has stopped warning some social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns on their platforms, reversing a years-long approach to preventing Russia and other actors from interfering in American politics less than a year before the U.S. presidential elections, according to company officials.

    Meta no longer receives notifications of global influence campaigns from the Biden administration, halting a prolonged partnership between the federal government and the world’s largest social media company, senior security officials said Wednesday.

    The developments underscore the far-reaching impact of a conservative legal campaign against initiatives established to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election, when Russia manipulated social media in an attempt to sow chaos and swing the vote for Donald Trump.

    That month, a federal judge limited the Biden administration’s communications with tech platforms in response to a lawsuit alleging such coordination ran afoul of the First Amendment by encouraging companies to remove falsehoods about covid-19 and the 2020 election.

    During a Senate hearing in October, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said that they had overhauled their communications with the tech industry in the wake of the Missouri v. Biden litigation, following questioning from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

    Graham Brookie, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said China-based foreign influence campaigns have evolved to spread conspiracy theories or target leaders.


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