Social networks have too much political influence, Americans tell researchers

Break it down by political affiliation, and the research gets really interesting. Those leaning Republican have a longer track record of thinking social media companies have too much political influence, with 82% saying as much in 2020, and 84% in February of this year. But the numbers have really shot up for those leaning Democrat—74% this year, up from 63% four years ago.

Pew doesn’t get into reasons here, but I can hazard a couple guesses. Firstly, the latest survey came in the context of the Israel-Gaza war, in which Meta in particular has been accused of censoring pro-Palestinian views. Secondly and perhaps more obviously, Elon Musk. The tycoon took over Twitter with a promise to rectify what he saw as a leftist bias, then went on to regularly amplify right-wing—and in some cases far-right—voices, creating a situation where X (as it is now called) feels biased in that direction. Many left-ish users have since decamped to rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky.

Perhaps there’s even been some impact here from the furor around TikTok and its alleged use by Beijing to influence U.S. opinion—traditionally Republicans have been more hawkish on China, but the outrage has become very much bipartisan in recent months.

Pew’s research suggests that people generally see social media as a malign phenomenon in 2024—64% of respondents said it had a mostly negative effect on U.S. politics, with just 10% opting for mostly positive.

Those are the same overall figures as in 2020, but again, break it down by affiliation and it’s clear that Democrats are now markedly more likely to see the negative side of social media (59% up from 53%) but Republicans are actually decreasingly likely to see it (71% down from 78%,) even though a whopping 93% of Republican respondents believe social media companies are probably censoring political views that the companies disagree with. (A relatively mild 74% of Dems share this belief, though that’s considerably up from 66% in 2020.)

I’m interested to know your thoughts on these findings—drop me an email—but my read is that there’s a political realignment taking place on U.S. social media, with left-leaning users now less happy with the situation than they were several years ago. Not that either side is particularly thrilled with how things are panning out, mind you.

More news below, and do check out my colleague Alexandra Sternlicht’s latest piece on the TikTok national-security controversy—TikTok’s claims about keeping Americans’ data out of Beijing’s hands are looking decidedly shaky. And do also keep an eye out for Amazon’s results later today, which should make it clearer how profitable—or not—the generative AI boom is proving at this early stage.

David Meyer

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NEWSWORTHY

Meta misinformation probe. The European Commission is probing Meta over its allegedly weak response to Russian disinformation campaigns on its services. As The Verge reports, the formal investigation under the EU’s new Digital Services Act (which governs content on big online platforms) is also looking into the efficacy of Meta’s mechanism for letting users flag illegal content, and its decision to demote political content in people’s feeds. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Meta’s Oversight Board—independent, but funded by the company—is cutting jobs as a cost-saving measure.

More Tesla layoffs. Tesla is laying off even more staff, after its recent 10% headcount reduction. This round includes the whole Supercharger team—which rolls out Tesla’s chargers and has been successful in getting many other EV manufacturers to adopt its charging standard—as well as many of Tesla’s public policy workers.

Carriers fined over location data. The Federal Communications Commission has fined T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon nearly $200 million in total for illegally selling their customers’ location data to aggregators that then resold the data to “bail-bond companies, bounty hunters, and other shady actors,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said, according to Reuters.

ON OUR FEED

“We’re moving full steam ahead to bring Fortnite and the Epic Games Store to iPhones in the EU soon and iPads this year!”

—Epic Games reacts with delight to the European Commission’s designation yesterday of iPadOS as a “gatekeeper” under the new Digital Markets Act, which means Apple must allow third-party app stores on its tablets as well as its already-designated iPhones.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Binance founder CZ faces possible 3-year jail term for allowing money laundering as judge decides sentence, by the Associated Press

Asana CEO calls Tesla the next Enron and says Elon Musk has misled customers, by Will Daniel

Supreme Court rejects Elon Musk’s attempt to free his X account from SEC oversight, by the Associated Press

Geopolitics and U.S. rules push chip firms to decouple from mainland China, with one major Taiwanese testing company ditching the market entirely, by Lionel Lim

Samsung joins Nvidia in AI semiconductor boom as memory chip sales help profits quadruple last year’s result, by Bloomberg

Drake’s fake Tupac, a $50,000 Elon Musk romance scam, and AI-generated racist tirades: Deepfakes are terrorizing society, by Jasmine Li

BEFORE YOU GO

Apple’s secretive Swiss lab.  Apple has built up a “significant outpost” in Zurich to host much of its AI work, the Financial Times reports. It’s apparently called the Vision Lab. The report also notes that Apple has poached at least three dozen AI and machine learning workers from rival Google.