Unless Congress takes more time to understand and then to craft careful remedies, the emerging challenges for open government that Facebook is implicated in – from automated activity to algorithmic transparency to public speech on private platforms to data ethics and protections to anti-trust concerns to artificial intelligence – will most likely be obscured by more sound and fury emanating from Washington that ultimately signifies nothing.
Continue readingNew York State’s 2018 democracy agenda will include more sunshine for online advertising
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new "democracy agenda to protect election integrity, including a first-in-the-nation state law to require disclosures and disclaimers for online political ads. The legislative proposal, which is modeled upon the Honest Ads Act that Sunlight helped draft in Congress, would similarly expand the state's definition of political communication (electioneering) to include paid digital and Internet advertising, require platforms to maintain a public file of paid political ads, and make reasonable efforts to prevent foreign actors from buying ads.
Continue readingThe Honest Ads Act would be a “valuable step in normalizing the status of political ads online”
The Honest Ads Act is the first significant legislative effort to address the new challenges of network propaganda, writes Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler, who sits on Sunlight's advisory board.
Continue readingPlease tell the FEC why you support more sunshine in online political ads
If you agree that it's time for the Federal Elections Commission to extend the definition of electioneering to online communications and require disclaimers and disclosures for paid political advertising on Internet platforms, please tell them!
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