Tag: Togo

Reading List – 21st February 2020

Three staff of the American NGO NDI have been expelled from Togo. The three were accredited as election observers by the Togolese electoral commission and had been working with a non-partisan local group to help them plan domestic observation of the forthcoming presidential election.

 

As Iran heads to the polls today, CNN’s Luke McGee previews the election in which hardline candidates are set to dominate as many moderates were barred from running. However the bigger factor might be turnout.

 

 

Special polling stations will be set up so that Israelis who are quarantined will still be able to vote in the March 2nd general election.

 

 

Axios reports that President Trump has cut back on his spending on Facebook despite the platform abstaining from making policy changes that would hurt him. As social media platforms signalled they might change policies on political advertising, Trump lobbied Facebook hard not to restrict his ability to mictro-target. While his spending on Facebook adverts is still significant, it is now a much smaller proportion of his advertising budget having fallen from a monthly high of 72% to just 14% and most ads are aimed at increasing his private voter information lists.

 

Reading List – 19th February 2020

A deep fake video has been circulating in India ahead of regional elections. It purports to show BJP politician Manoj Tiwari criticising the regional government in a video targeted at a particular section of the population who speak the Haryanvi dialect of Hindi. We know it is a fake because the company that produced it has told us how they did it (and because the politician concerned doesn’t actually speak the language involved).

“In a country like India where digital literacy is nascent, even low-tech versions of video manipulation have led to violence. In 2018, more than 30 deaths were linked to rumours circulated on WhatsApp in India.”

Various solutions have been proposed, including banning deep fakes from being circulated within 60 days of an election. Such a plan is likely to fall foul of free speech advocates and comedians in many countries. But would a proposal such as that banning the distribution of manipulated political images be any better?

 

Another Vice article which contrasts the public words of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with his company’s private lobbying efforts to prevent any meaningful regulation.

A senior US politician recently told me that he believes that significant electoral interference will continue to take place in America and around the world until regulation is introduced.

I’ve written recently that Facebook has failed to come up with a sensible vision for how regulation of political content on social media can work. This leaves it open to countries (or blocs like the EU) to regulate and, without an alternative vision, platforms will be in a weaker position to affect such changes.

 

Alix Boucher gives an overview of the coming contest and the concerns that election observers have over its fairness.

 

Chatham House’s Ryhor Astapenia argues that although Belarus President Alexander Lukashenka has succeeded in keeping his country somewhat distant from Russia, he has resisted reforms that would truly separate the economy from Russia’s and failed to implement significant reforms.