The Technology 202: Coronavirus could transform political conventions for the social media era

The forced changes could forever remake the political event for the social media era. 

A crew of about 400 people plans to broadcast to the nation through hundreds of live video feeds from politicians’ homes, national monuments and stages around the country, my colleague Michael Scherer reports. The convention will also be significantly shorter, and many speakers, including younger party stars such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), will only have a minute or two to speak.  

For more than 70 years, political conventions have been made for television. But shorter speeches straight from politicians’ couches could be better suited for the digital world, where snack-size clips and 280-character missives reign. 

“If you look at how TikTok and Snapchat are structured, it is all 15-second to 30-second bites,” Hugh Evans, co-founder and chief executive of Global Citizen who organized the coronavirus-era musical broadcast “One World: Together at Home,” told Michael. “The nature of consumption has changed. You are not going to sit and watch a Saturday night movie. You are going to consume content all day long.”

Creating viral moments will be essential to ensuring the Democrats’ message cuts through, especially as Michael notes TV broadcasters could have their own on-air talent talk over some of the carefully prepared moments. 

The risk of technical problems also runs high with the organizers juggling so many feeds from so many different locations. Dozens of speakers were mailed production kits – with equipment such as microphones, lighting and advanced routers – to avoid some of these snafus. 

Social media companies are preparing for both the Democratic and Republican conventions. 

The convention will stream online on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Amazon Prime Video and Microsoft Bing and on smart devices such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku TV, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

Here’s what to expect from the major platforms:

• Twitter will prominently feature the convention live streams, alongside journalists and political accounts covering the event, said company spokesman Nick Pacilio. Twitter told both parties in November that it would not make financial contributions to either convention, he added. 
• Snap is letting its news partners take the lead. The company is planning comprehensive coverage from its Discover platform, said company spokeswoman Rachel Racusen. 
• Google’s YouTube says it’s a “destination with a front seat for major election events,” according to a recent blog post. But when viewers log on to watch the Democrats this week, they will be greeted by an influx of ads from President Trump, who reportedly purchased some of the best advertising real estate on the service to capture the spotlight. 
• Facebook will provide virtual technical support to both conventions, according to spokeswoman Katie Derkits.

The broad efforts underscore how much social media companies’ video streaming tech and work on political events has matured in recent years. Twitter’s live-streaming functionality was so new in 2016 that the parties’ conventions were the first events to be officially live-streamed on Twitter, Pacilio noted. YouTube has live-streamed the conventions at least since 2012. 

Since the last presidential election, the companies have learned more about how bad actors – both domestic and from abroad – can leverage their platforms to spread falsehoods. Several of the social networks have strengthened their policies on voter misinformation in recent days, as they expect more eyeballs to be on political issues this week and next week, during the Republicans’ convention.

TikTok says it will have “an escalation channel” for the DNC and RNC to flag potentially misleading content directly to its teams for review. 

“Our specially trained safety team works both proactively and reactively to investigate and remove misleading or manipulated content as we continue our efforts to safeguard our platform and community ahead of the elections,” said TikTok spokeswoman Jamie Favazza. “This includes during the conventions, of course, a heightened time for political awareness broadly.” 

Facebook recently started labeling posts about voting from any user with a link to its new voting information center. And Twitter recently broadened its policies to limit misleading statements about vote-by-mail, as Trump repeatedly attacks the method. 

Employees allege the organization has made compromises on its work on politically sensitive issues such as immigration and criminal justice reform to meet the political objectives of Facebook in the Trump era, Nitasha Tiku reports. Recent protests over police brutality and concerns leading up to the 2020 election have further fueled internal tensions over how the philanthropic corporation, co-founded by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, handles issues of racial justice. 

“We have to consider, ‘Is this going to be an issue for the right? Is this going to be bad publicity for Mark?’” an employee who works on the initiative said. “If we are trying to appease the right, or we’re trying not to offend them, you have a very narrow lane in which you can work when you work on immigration and criminal justice.”

A group of employees lobbied Chan to take steps including hiring a diversity chief who reports to her, conducting a pay equity audit and creating a plan to prepare Black employees for leadership roles, according to a previously unreported letter obtained by The Washington Post. They say Chan has been receptive to some of the ideas.

“While a great deal of CZI’s philanthropic efforts to date have served to advance racial equity, progress has been uneven across our issue areas, and it has not always been explicitly named or systematically tracked,” CZI chief operating officer, Josué Estrada, wrote in a response to The Post. “We also have work to do internally.” 

The social media giant says Apple refused to reduce its 30 percent fee for purchases made through App Store apps for Facebook’s new paid live-events features, Rachel Lerman reports.

“We approached Apple about this policy and asked them to reduce this fee for businesses struggling during covid-19,” Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook App, said on a call with reporters Friday. “And, unfortunately, they dismissed our request.”

The social media giant is just the latest company to criticize Apple’s practices since Fortnite maker Epic Games filed a suit against Apple over its App Store rules on Thursday. 

Epic also sued Google for removing its app from the Google Play store, which it also alleges exerts a monopoly over developers.

The backlash could add fuel to the antitrust scrutiny of Apple in Washington, just weeks after lawmakers pressed chief executive Tim Cook on the App Store policies at a high-profile hearing on competition.

“Well, we’re looking at other things, yes,” Trump said when asked whether there were other Chinese companies the administration was looking to put pressure on, such as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. 

Trump issued a new executive order Friday that extends the deadline for ByteDance to divest from TikTok from 45 days to 90 days. Trump says he will ban the app if another company has not acquired its U.S. operations by then.

“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance … might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” Trump said in the order. TikTok has denied that it has been asked to share U.S. user data with China and said it would not do so if asked.

“I’m going to start looking at it. There are many, many people, it seems to be a split decision, and many people think that he should somehow be treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things,” Trump said during a news conference at his New Jersey golf resort.

The former NSA contractor released sensitive data in 2013 revealing the extent of the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. The Justice Department has charged Snowden with several crimes including violating the Espionage Act, but he is currently living in Russia, outside the reach of extradition.

Trump would not say whether he agreed with other critics that Snowden was a traitor. “I’ve seen people that are very conservative and very liberal, and they agree on the same issue, they could read it both ways,” Trump said.

The comments sparked divisive reactions from Republican leaders on Twitter:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) encouraged the president:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) also said that pardoning Snowden and reforming U.S. whistleblower laws was a necessary next step.

But many Republicans recoiled at the idea, calling Snowden a traitor. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.):

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.):

“My takeaway: Despite its eerie power, this type of app isn’t a privacy invasion,” Geoffrey writes. “It never records your location or shares who you come in contact with. But it’s also possible apps like Covidwise aren’t very effective — in our team’s first 10 days of testing, we didn’t get a single exposure alert.”

“To really discover the potential of this tech, lots and lots of us would need to use it. You’ve not got much to lose, and there’s a lot we could all gain,” he added. 

The investigation will look at how the e-commerce company influences the prices set by traders on its online marketplace, Germany’s top antitrust official Andreas Mundt told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily, Reuters reported. 

Germany is the company’s second-biggest market after the United States, where the company also faces antitrust scrutiny.

The European Union also reportedly plans to bring antitrust charges for its treatment of third-party sellers sometime this year, the New York Times reported in June. 

• The Democratic National Convention will take place Monday through Thursday.

D.C. ?  San Francisco