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      Meta Will Give Researchers More Information on Political Ad Targeting

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      Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said that it planned to give outside researchers more detailed information on how political ads are targeted across its platform, providing insight into the ways that politicians, campaign operatives and political strategists buy and use ads ahead of the midterm elections.Starting on Monday, academics and researchers who are registered with an initiative called the Facebook Open Research and Transparency project will be allowed to see data on how each political or social ad was used to target people. The information includes which interest categories — such as “people who like dogs” or “people who enjoy the outdoors” — were chosen to aim an ad at someone.In addition, Meta said it planned to include summaries of targeting information for some of its ads in its publicly viewable Ad Library starting in July. The company created the Ad Library in 2019 so that journalists, academics and others could obtain information and help safeguard elections against the misuse of digital advertising.While Meta has given outsiders some access into how its political ads were used in the past, it has restricted the amount of information that could be seen, citing privacy reasons. Critics have claimed that the company’s system has been flawed and sometimes buggy, and have frequently asked for more data.That has led to conflicts. Meta previously clashed with a group of New York University academics who tried ingesting large amounts of self-reported data on Facebook users to learn more about the platform. The company cut off access to the group last year, citing violations of its platform rules.The new data that is being added to the Facebook Open Research Transparency project and the Ad Library is a way to share information on political ad targeting while trying to keep data on its users private, the company said.“By making advertiser targeting criteria available for analysis and reporting on ads run about social issues, elections and politics, we hope to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies,” the company said in a statement.With the new data, for example, researchers browsing the Ad Library could see that over the course of a month, a Facebook page ran 2,000 political ads and that 40 percent of the ad budget was targeted to “people who live in Pennsylvania” or “people who are interested in politics.”Meta said it had been bound by privacy rules and regulations on what types of data it could share with outsiders. In an interview, Jeff King, a vice president in Meta’s business integrity unit, said the company had hired thousands of workers over the past few years to review those privacy issues.“Every single thing we release goes through a privacy review now,” he said. “We want to make sure we give people the right amount of data, but still remain privacy conscious while we do it.”The new data on political ads will cover the period from August 2020, three months before the last U.S. presidential election, to the present day. More

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      How Conservatives and Progressives Reacted to Musk Buying Twitter

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      When Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter on Monday, he promised to return free speech and debate to the platform, saying it was “the bedrock of a functioning democracy.”Whether a less moderated social network will be a good or bad thing has become a top topic of debate on Twitter itself among influencers and politicians from across the political spectrum.On the right, the deal was widely celebrated. Mr. Musk’s ownership, many conservatives tweeted, presaged a new era of free speech — where topics that were previously moderated could now be aired openly.Several members of the far right started testing the limits of a less regulated platform, tweeting criticism of the transgender community, doubting the effectiveness of masks, or claiming that the 2020 election results were fraudulent — topics that had been moderated by labeling or removing the false information or suspending accounts that spread it.“Millions of Americans have been choking back their thoughts and opinions on this platform for YEARS out of fear of being suspended/canceled,” John Rich, a member of the country music duo Big and Rich, said in a tweet that received more than 50,000 likes. “I have a feeling the dam is about to break.”Michael Knowles, a conservative podcaster, repeated on Monday the false claim that “the 2020 presidential election was obviously rigged,” receiving more than 70,000 likes. Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said that stories about “Hunter Biden’s laptop or evidence that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab” could no longer be censored.And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia known for pushing conspiracy theories, asked that several banned accounts — including those of former President Donald J. Trump, the conspiracist podcaster Alex Jones and even her own personal account — be reactivated.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesHer sentiment was echoed off the platform among members of the far-right who were banned from Twitter after violating its terms of service. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser for Mr. Trump who is now aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory, reposted a message on his Telegram account suggesting that Twitter could be used to recruit — or “wake up” — others to their cause.“This is mind blowing,” read the post, which was originally posted by a user, named BioClandestine, who was also banned from Twitter. “The impact of the Twitter buyout is going to be colossal as it pertains to waking normies. It’s already begun.”On the left, much of the conversation was focused on how the deal exemplified the outsize power of billionaires.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who is backing antitrust reforms to target the tech giants, in a tweet. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said Mr. Musk’s purchase was a sign the United States needed to institute a wealth tax.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said that “protection of Americans’ privacy must be a condition of any sale.” Former antitrust officials have said they think regulators will look closely at the deal but may struggle to find a cause to block it since Twitter does not compete with Mr. Musk’s other major holdings. More

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      Barack Obama’s New Role: Fighting Disinformation

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      The former president has embarked on a campaign to warn that the scourge of online falsehoods has eroded the foundations of democracy.SAN FRANCISCO — In 2011, President Barack Obama swept into Silicon Valley and yukked it up with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. The occasion was a town hall with the social network’s employees that covered the burning issues of the day: taxes, health care, the promise of technology to solve the nation’s problems.More than a decade later, Mr. Obama is making another trip to Silicon Valley, this time with a grimmer message about the threat that the tech giants have created to the nation itself.In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad.In a speech at Stanford University on Thursday, he is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.The urgency of the crisis — the internet’s “demand for crazy,” as he put it recently — has already pushed him further than he was ever prepared to go as president to take on social media.“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money but say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society,” Mr. Obama, now 61, said at a conference on disinformation this month organized by the University of Chicago and The Atlantic.Mr. Obama’s campaign — the timing of which stemmed not from a single cause, people close to him said, but a broad concern about the damage to democracy’s foundations — comes in the middle of a fierce but inconclusive debate over how best to restore trust online.In Washington, lawmakers are so sharply divided that any legislative compromise seems out of reach. Democrats criticize giants like Facebook, which has been renamed Meta, and Twitter for failing to rid their sites of harmful content. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., too, has lashed out at the platforms that allowed falsehoods about coronavirus vaccines to spread, saying last year that “they’re killing people.”Republicans, for their part, accuse the companies of suppressing free speech by censoring conservative voices — above all former President Donald J. Trump, who was barred from Facebook and Twitter after the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 last year. With so little agreement about the problem, there is even less about a solution.Whether Mr. Obama’s advocacy can sway the debate remains to be seen. While he has not sought to endorse a single solution or particular piece of legislation, he nonetheless hopes to appeal across the political spectrum for common ground.“You’ve got to think about how things are going to be consumed through different partisan filtering but still make your true, authentic, best case about how you see the world and what the stakes are and why,” said Jason Goldman, a former Twitter, Blogger and Medium executive who served as the White House’s first chief digital officer under Mr. Obama and continues to advise him.“There’s a potential reason to believe that a good path exists out of some of the messes that we’re in,” he added.As an apostle of the dangers of disinformation, Mr. Obama might be an imperfect messenger. He was the first presidential candidate to ride the power of social media into office in 2008 but then, as president, did little to intervene when its darker side — propagating falsehoods, extremism, racism and violence — became apparent at home and abroad.“I saw it sort of unfold — and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized,” Mr. Obama said in Chicago, expressing something close to regret. He added, “I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.”Mr. Obama, those close to him said, became fixated by disinformation after leaving office. He rehashed, as many others have, whether he had done enough to counter the information campaign ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to tilt the 2016 election against Hillary Rodham Clinton.He began meeting with executives, activists and other experts in earnest last year after Mr. Trump refused to recognize the results of the 2020 election, making unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, those who have consulted with Mr. Obama said.In his musings on the matter, Mr. Obama has not claimed to have discovered a silver bullet that has eluded others who have studied the issue. By coming forward more publicly, however, he hopes to highlight the values for corporate conduct around which consensus could form.“This can be an effective nudge to a lot of the thinking that is already taking place,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, said. “Every day brings more proof of why this matters.”The location of Thursday’s speech, Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, was intentional, bringing Mr. Obama to the heart of the industry that in many ways shaped his presidency.In his 2008 presidential campaign, he went from being an underdog candidate to an online sensation with his embrace of social media as a tool to target voters and to solicit donations. He became an industry favorite; his digital campaign was led by a Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, and several other tech chief executives endorsed him, including Eric Schmidt of Google.During his administration, Mr. Obama extolled the promise of tech companies to strengthen the economy with higher-skilled jobs and to propel democracy movements abroad. He lured tech employees like Mr. Goldman to join his administration and filled his campaign coffers with fund-raisers at the Bay Area homes of supporters like Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta, and Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.It was a period of mutual admiration and little government oversight of the tech industry. Though Mr. Obama endorsed privacy regulations, not a single piece of legislation to control the tech companies passed during his tenure, even as they became economic behemoths that touch virtually every aspect of life.Looking back at his administration’s approach, Mr. Obama has said he would not pinpoint any one action or piece of legislation that he might have handled differently. In hindsight, though, he understands now how optimism about online technologies, including social media, outweighed caution, according to Mr. Rhodes.“He’ll certainly acknowledge that there’s things that could have been done differently or ways we were all thinking about the tools and technologies that turned out at times to see the opportunities more than the risks,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s views began to change with Russia’s flood of propaganda on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stir confusion and chaos in the 2016 presidential election. Days after that election, Mr. Obama took Mr. Zuckerberg aside at a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, to warn that he needed to take the problem more seriously.Once he left office, Mr. Obama was noticeably absent for much of the public conversation around disinformation.“As a general matter, there was an awareness that anything he said about certain issues was just going to ricochet around the fun house mirrors,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s approach to the issue has been characteristically deliberative. He has consulted the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and others. Through the Obama Foundation in Chicago, he has also met often with the scholars the foundation has trained; they recounted their own experiences with disinformation in a variety of fields around the world.From those deliberations, potential solutions have begun taking shape, a theme he plans to outline broadly on Thursday. While Mr. Obama maintains that he remains “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” he has focused on the need for greater transparency and regulatory oversight of online discourse — and the ways companies have profited from manipulating audiences through their proprietary algorithms.Mr. Goldman compared a potential approach to consumer protection or food safety practices already in place.“You may not know exactly what’s in a hot dog, but you trust that there is a process for meat inspections that ensures that the food sold and consumed in this country and other countries around the world are safe,” he said.In Congress, lawmakers have already proposed the creation of a regulatory agency dedicated to overseeing internet companies. Others have proposed stripping tech companies of a legal shield that protects them from liability.No proposals have advanced, though, even as the European Union has moved forward, putting into law some of the practices still merely bandied about in Washington. The union is expected to move as soon as Friday on new regulations to impose audits of algorithmic amplification.Kyle Plotkin, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, said Mr. Obama “can be a polarizing figure” and could inflame, not calm, the debate over disinformation.“Adoring fans will be very happy with him weighing in, but others won’t,” he said. “I don’t think he will move the ball forward. If anything, he moves the ball backward.” More

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      ‘La French Tech’ Arrives Under Macron, but Proves No Panacea

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      The president has brought innovation, jobs and growth. Still, resentments fester on the eve of the presidential election.PARIS — In full Steve Jobs mode, President Emmanuel Macron of France donned a black turtleneck in January and took to Twitter to celebrate the creation in France of 25 “unicorn” start-ups — companies with a market value of over 1 billion euros, or almost $1.1 billion.He declared that France’s start-up economy was “changing the lives of French people” and “strengthening our sovereignty.” It was also helping to create jobs: Unemployment has fallen to 7.4 percent, the lowest level in a decade.The start-up boom was a milestone for a young president elected five years ago as a restless disrupter, promising to pry open the economy and make it competitive in the 21st century.To some extent, Mr. Macron has succeeded, luring billions of euros in foreign investments and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country whose resistance to change is stubborn. But disruption is just that, and the president has at the same time left many French feeling unsettled and unhappy, left behind or ignored.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election starting on Sunday, it is two countries that will vote — a mainly urban France that sees the need for change to meet the era’s sweeping technological and economic challenges, and a France of the “periphery,” wary of innovation, struggling to get by, alarmed by immigration and resentful of a leader seen as embodying the arrogance of the privileged.Which France shows up at voting booths in greater numbers will determine the outcome.Campaign posters on display this month in the northeastern French town of Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn many Western societies, the simultaneous spread of technology and inequality has posed acute problems, stirring social tensions, and France has proved no exception. If the disenchanted France prevails, Marine Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the nationalist right, will most likely prevail, too.Worried that he may have lost the left by favoring start-up entrepreneurship and market reforms, Mr. Macron has in the past week been multiplying appeals to the left, resorting to phrases like “our lives are worth more than their profits” to suggest his perceived rightward lurch was not the whole story.He told France Inter radio that “fraternity” was the most important word in the French national motto, and said during a visit to Brittany that “solidarity” and “equality of opportunity” would be the central themes of an eventual second term.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On the Scene: A Times reporter attended a rally held by Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate. Here is what he saw.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in President Emmanuel Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.A Late Surge: After recently rising in voter surveys, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.The pledges looked like signs of growing anxiety about the election’s outcome. After several months in which Mr. Macron’s re-election had appeared virtually assured, the gap between him and Ms. Le Pen has closed. The leading two candidates in Sunday’s vote will go through to a runoff on April 24.The election will be largely decided by perceptions of the economy. In Mr. Macron’s favor, the country has bounced back faster than expected from coronavirus lockdowns, with economic growth reaching 7 percent after a devastating pandemic-induced recession.Marine Le Pen speaking this month in Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe most significant cultural transformation has come in the area of tech, where Mr. Macron’s determination to create a start-up culture centered around new technology has brought changes the government considers essential to the future of France.Cédric O, the secretary of state for the digital sector, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, no tie, admits to being obsessed. Day after long day, he plots the future of “la French tech” from his spacious office at the Finance Ministry.Five years ago, that may have seemed quixotic, but something has stirred. “It’s vital to be obsessed because the risk France and Europe are facing is to be kicked out of history,” Mr. O, 39, said, borrowing a line often used by Mr. Macron. “We have to get back into the international technological race.”Toward that end, Mr. Macron opened Station F, a mammoth incubator project in Paris representing France’s start-up ambitions, and earmarked nearly €10 billion in tax credits and other inducements to lure research activity and artificial intelligence business. A new bank was created to help finance start-ups.The president wined and dined multinational chief executives, creating an annual gathering at Versailles called “Choose France.”Since 2019, France has become the leading destination for foreign investment in Europe, and more than 70 investment projects worth €12 billion have been pledged by foreign multinationals at the Versailles gatherings, said Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister.In the past four years, IBM, SAP of Germany and DeepMind, the London-based machine learning company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, have increased investment in France and created thousands of jobs.Station F, a mammoth project in Paris that represents France’s start-up ambitions.Roberto Frankenberg for The New York TimesFacebook and Google have also bolstered their French presence and their artificial intelligence teams in Paris. Salesforce, the American cloud computing company, is moving ahead with over €2 billion in pledged investments.“Macron brought a culture shift where France was suddenly open to the world of funders,” said Thomas Clozel, a doctor by training and the founder in 2016 of Owkin, a start-up that uses Artificial Intelligence to personalize and improve medical treatment. “He made everything easy for start-up entrepreneurs and so changed the view of France as an anticapitalist society.”François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s Socialist Party predecessor, had famously declared in 2012: “My enemy is the world of finance.” As a result, Mr. Clozel said, securing funds as a French start-up was so problematic that he chose to incorporate in the United States.No longer.“Today, I am thinking of reincorporating in France,” he said. “The ease of dealing with the government, the consortium of start-ups helping one another, and the new French tech pride are compelling.”Among the start-ups that have had a significant effect on French life are Doctolib, a website that allows patients to arrange for medical appointments and tests online, and Backmarket, an online market for reconditioned tech gadgets that just became France’s most valuable start-up, at $5.7 billion.They began life before Mr. Macron took office, but have grown exponentially in the past five years.“I have made 56 investments in the last two years, and 53 of them are in France,” said Jonathan Benhamou, a French entrepreneur who founded PeopleDoc, a company that simplifies access to information for human resources departments.Now funding new ventures and focusing on a new start-up called Resilience in the field of personalized cancer care, Mr. Benhamou credits Mr. Macron with “giving investors confidence in stability and creating a virtuous cycle.”Talented engineers no longer go elsewhere because there is an “ecosystem” for them in France, Mr. O said.Yellow Vest protesters blocking a road in Caen, in France’s Normandy region, in November 2018.Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Macron has insisted that opening the economy is consistent with maintaining protections for French workers and that the arrival of la French tech does not mean the embrace of the no-holds-barred capitalism behind the churn of American creativity.Despite the president’s overhauls, France remains one of the most expensive countries for payroll taxes, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with hourly labor costs of nearly €38, close to levels seen in Sweden, Norway and other northern European countries.“We know that we have to go further,” Mr. Riester, the foreign trade minister, said in a recent interview. “We still have some brakes that could be taken off the economy, and we have to cut some red tape in the future.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. 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      ‘I’ll Stand on the Side of Russia’: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online

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      After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump’s Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald J. Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “pretty smart.” His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favorable to Mr. Putin and that rationalized his actions against Ukraine. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Mr. Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.And in Telegram groups like The Patriot Voice and Facebook groups including Texas for Donald Trump 2020, members criticized President Biden’s handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Mr. Putin more than Mr. Biden.The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets, according to The Times’s review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organized campaigns make them difficult to track.)Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kyiv this week. The square was the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarized Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshiping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia statements were potentially harmful because it could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Mr. Putin’s actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticized how Mr. Biden has handled the conflict.“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Mr. Biden, tweeting that it “feeds into Putin’s narrative.”Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? 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      Peter Thiel to Exit Meta’s Board to Support Trump-Aligned Candidates

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      The tech billionaire, who has been on the board of the company formerly known as Facebook since 2005, is backing numerous politicians in the midterm elections.Peter Thiel, one of the longest-serving board members of Meta, the parent of Facebook, plans to step down, the company said on Monday.Mr. Thiel, 54, wants to focus on influencing November’s midterm elections, said a person with knowledge of Mr. Thiel’s thinking who declined to be identified. Mr. Thiel sees the midterms as crucial to changing the direction of the country, this person said, and he is backing candidates who support the agenda of former President Donald J. Trump.Over the last year, Mr. Thiel, who has a net worth estimated at $2.6 billion by Forbes, has become one of the Republican’s Party’s largest donors. He gave $10 million each last year to the campaigns of two protégés, Blake Masters, who is running for a Senate seat in Arizona, and J.D. Vance, who is running for Senate in Ohio.Mr. Thiel has been on Meta’s board since 2005, when Facebook was a tiny start-up and he was one of its first institutional investors. But scrutiny of Mr. Thiel’s position on the board has steadily increased as the company was embroiled in political controversies, including barring Mr. Trump from the platform, and as the venture capitalist has become more politically active.The departure means Meta loses its board’s most prominent conservative voice. The 10-member board has undergone significant changes in recent years, as many of its members have left and been replaced, often with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Drew Houston, the chief executive of Dropbox, joined Facebook’s board in 2020, and Tony Xu, the founder of DoorDash, joined it last month. Meta didn’t address whether it intends to replace Mr. Thiel.The company, which recently marked its 18th birthday, is undertaking a shift toward the so-called metaverse, which its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, believes is the next generation of the internet. Last week, Meta reported spending more than $10 billion on the effort in 2021, along with mixed financial results. That wiped more than $230 billion off the company’s market value.“Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he’s done for our company,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a statement. “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.”A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.In a statement on Monday, Mr. Thiel said: “It has been a privilege to work with one of the great entrepreneurs of our time. Mark Zuckerberg’s intelligence, energy and conscientiousness are tremendous. His talents will serve Meta well as he leads the company into a new era.”Mr. Thiel first met Mr. Zuckerberg 18 years ago when he provided the entrepreneur with $500,000 in capital for Facebook, valuing the company at $4.9 million. That gave Mr. Thiel, who with his venture firm Founders Fund controlled a 10 percent stake in the social network, a seat on its board of directors.Since then, Mr. Thiel has become a confidant of Mr. Zuckerberg. He counseled the company through its early years of rapid user growth, and through its difficulties shifting its business to mobile phones around the time of its 2012 initial public offering.He has also been seen as the contrarian who has Mr. Zuckerberg’s ear, championing unfettered speech across digital platforms when it suited him. His conservative views also gave Facebook’s board what Mr. Zuckerberg saw as ideological diversity.In 2019 and 2020, as Facebook grappled with how to deal with political speech and claims made in political advertising, Mr. Thiel urged Mr. Zuckerberg to withstand the public pressure to take down those ads, even as other executives and board members thought the company should change its position. Mr. Zuckerberg sided with Mr. Thiel.But Mr. Thiel’s views on speech were at times contradictory. He funded a secret war against the media website Gawker, eventually resulting in the site’s bankruptcy.Mr. Thiel’s political influence and ties to key Republicans and conservatives have also offered a crucial gateway into Washington for Mr. Zuckerberg, especially during the Trump administration. In October 2019, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Thiel had a private dinner with President Trump.Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg have long taken heat for Mr. Thiel’s presence on the board. In 2016, Mr. Thiel was one of the few tech titans in largely liberal Silicon Valley to publicly support Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.In 2020, when Mr. Trump’s incendiary Facebook posts were put under the microscope, critics cited Mr. Thiel’s board seat as a reason for Mr. Zuckerberg’s continued insistence that Mr. Trump’s posts be left standing.Facebook banned Mr. Trump’s account last year after the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, saying his messages incited violence. The episode became a key rallying point for conservatives who say mainstream social platforms have censored them.Mr. Vance, who used to work at one of Mr. Thiel’s venture funds, and Mr. Masters, the chief operating officer of Mr. Thiel’s family office, have railed against Facebook. In October, the two Senate candidates argued in an opinion piece in The New York Post that Mr. Zuckerberg’s $400 million in donations to local election offices in 2020 amounted to “election meddling” that should be investigated.Recently, Mr. Thiel has publicly voiced his disagreement with content moderation decisions at Facebook and other major social media platforms. In October at a Miami event organized by a conservative technology association, he said he would “take QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories any day over a Ministry of Truth.”Mr. Thiel’s investing has also clashed with his membership on Meta’s board. He invested in the company that became Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up that scraped billions of photos from Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms in violation of their terms of service. Founders Fund also invested in Boldend, a cyberweapons company that claimed it had found a way to hack WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging platform.Meta declined to comment on Mr. Thiel’s investments.In the past year, Mr. Thiel, who also is chairman of the software company Palantir, has increased his political giving to Republican candidates. Ahead of the midterms, he is backing four Senate candidates and 12 House candidates. Among those House candidates are three people running primary challenges to Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching Mr. Trump for the events of Jan. 6. More

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      Joe Manchin Is Wondering What Happened to His White House Christmas Card

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      Gail Collins: Bret, this is our last conversation of the year. I’ve had a lot of fun disagreeing over the past 12 months. Mentioning that partly because it’s hard to imagine a whole lot of people saying, “Remember all the great times we had in 2021.”Bret Stephens: I had such high hopes for the year, Gail. Melania and Donald would slink quietly out of the White House, she in couture, he in ignominy. The vaccines would conquer the pandemic. Joe Biden would preside competently and serenely over a country looking for respite after four years of craziness. Relations with the rest of the world would improve. Republicans would wake up from their fever dreams and become a serious party again, or at least hang their heads in shame after the sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6.Alas not. 2021 turned out to be even worse than 2020, and I’m struggling to see why 2022 will be any better. Care to cheer me up?Gail: OK, here’s a theory. Most of the things that were terrible about 2021 were reflections of a world that’s changing hyperfast because of new technology.Bret: The assault on the Capitol was more Genghis than Google. Sorry, go on ….Gail: Crazy people find it very, very easy to get in touch and swap paranoid fantasies. Mean people can gossip on sites that the targets of their ire can visit easily. (Always thinking about those teenage girls reading reviews of their clothes/figures/hair). Special events are dwindling — no point in going out to the movies if you can stream the latest attractions at home.Bret: Very true. Social media freezes us all in a kind of permanent middle school presided over by a mean girl named Veronica.Gail: None of this will go away, but I’m hoping that as we get more skilled in living with the good side of the web, things will balance out. Sane people will confer on how to make the world better. Families will automatically set places at holiday dinners for loved ones who can Zoom in from the other side of the country. And those who are consigned to their beds by illness or old age can have fantastic adventures via virtual reality headsets.Bret: That’s a bit too “Brave New World” for me, Gail. My hope for 2022 is that millions more Americans will realize that the worst thing they can do with their lives is to spend them working or socializing online. People should be dedigitizing — if that’s a word — disconnecting virtually and reconnecting physically. They should leave bigger cities in favor of places where nature is more accessible, homes are more affordable, neighbors are more approachable, careers are less cutthroat, the point of life isn’t the next promotion, weekends are actual weekends, people shop at real stores and read real books and have dinner with real people. Sitting around and doing nothing should be seen as a perfectly respectable use of time.Gail: Well, I’m not going to argue with you about the glories of doing nothing. But I can’t relate to your vision of finding meaningful life by ditching the big cities. Reminds me of growing up in an era of suburban explosion where the new neighborhoods had about as much diversity as a raft of albino waterfowl.Bret: Very insensitive to albino waterfowl, Gail.Gail: But maybe we’re both right — if the pandemic ever fades, the future could hold lots of urban-rural options and folks will get to pick.Bret: Well, that’s the meta-hope. The more specific hope is that we’ll finally lick the pandemic, Democrats will stop screwing up and the country won’t get handed back to Donald — “They’re Jewish people that run The New York Times” — Trump.Gail: I’m obviously not going to argue that the Democrats are doing a terrific job at present. But their situation — that 50-50 Senate, the pandemic-riddled economy — is pretty impossible. Don’t think any president could have delivered much in this mess. Not Reagan or Lyndon Johnson or maybe even F.D.R.Bret: Hmmm. Reagan had a Democratic-controlled House for his whole presidency. Biden could be doing better.Gail: Different kind of political parties back then. Trump’s turned the whole scene into something from “Attack of the Killer Bees.”Bret: Point taken.Gail: And oh my God, Joe Manchin. I’ll refrain from doing an hourlong rant, but this is a man whose state uses up way more government money than its people pay in taxes. Who wants to kill climate change legislation while he’s living off the millions he made in the coal business.Bret: And I’ll refrain from reminding you that I’ve been saying for months there was no way Manchin was going to vote for Biden’s legislation. I’ll also refrain from gloating.Gail: What I’d love to see is an election next year that gives Biden an actual, real, not-Manchin-dependent Democratic Congress so he could be tested on how he could deliver in a semi-sane world. Any chance, do you think?Bret: Very unlikely. Midterm elections historically go against the party holding the presidency. Republicans have the built-in advantage of being able to gerrymander more districts than Democrats. Biden’s poll numbers are terrible, and I don’t think he has the kind of political charisma to turn things around. And people are scared and angry, particularly about rising prices.Gail: Biden actually has a lot he can point to with pride, particularly in the war on the coronavirus. Still, I can’t say I disagree with you. Sigh.Bret: The only silver lining, as far as Democrats are concerned, is that Republicans always reach for the self-destruct button whenever they have control of Congress, particularly when it comes to the House. Donald’s Footstool, a.k.a. Kevin McCarthy, is not a compelling G.O.P. figurehead if he becomes speaker.Gail: If the Republicans have to rely on Kevin McCarthy’s charisma, that is certainly good news for the Democrats.Bret: Turning to another subject, Gail, Covid cases are skyrocketing again. What’s your prescription for doing things differently?Gail: The rules won’t change — get the shots, three of them, wear the damned masks and don’t patronize places that cater to crowds of people unless there’s a vaccination check at the door.Bret: Agreed. But keep schools open no matter what. It’s bad enough having a public-health crisis without having to add mental-health and learning crises on top of it.Gail: I’m fine with barring the unvaccinated from public places, including work, unless they’re prepared to start every day with a coronavirus test. And of course we’ve got to do battle against the right-wing ranters who try to get attention as anti-mask crusaders.That’s your party they’re coming from — any ideas on how to make them behave?Bret: Former party, Gail, former party. Roy Moore’s Senate candidacy was the last straw for me.Gail: Bret, weren’t you going to try to reform Republicanism from within? Not that we wouldn’t welcome you into the Democratic fold. I’ll bet Nancy Pelosi would be happy to hold a celebration, once parties are permitted again.Bret: I’m sure Madam Speaker would gladly send me a half-eaten box of crackers and a banana peel so I could slip on it.Truth is, I’m happy as an independent: It’s like getting to order à la carte, whereas everyone else is stuck with a bento box of things that don’t actually go together. Why do Republicans have to be in favor of more economic freedom but less social freedom? Why do so many Democrats favor something closer to the opposite? And why can’t ideologues of both the left and right wrap their heads around the Emerson line about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds?Gail: I believe we’ve marched into a major disagreement. It’s true both parties are flawed, although I’d certainly argue that one has turned into Flaw City. But going independent is the worst possible response.Bret: Say more ….Gail: The only way you make a party better is by working from within. In New York, the primaries decide who the elected officials are going to be. Voting for an independent third-party candidate is worse than a waste. Registering as an independent is like telling a charitable fund-raiser that you want to help by sending good thoughts.Bret: Totally disagree! The more independents there are, the more Democrats and Republicans need to fight for their votes rather than take entire constituencies for granted, to bend toward the political center rather than toward the fringe, to pay attention to the personal quality of their candidates rather than insisting that they pass ideological purity tests, to accept nuance and compromise. We’ve become way too partisan as a country, and reducing the hold each party has on its own side is a good thing. I’d even say “independents of the world, unite,” but that would kinda defeat the purpose.Gail: I dunno, Bret. Nothing more irritating than that plague-on-both-your-houses posing. I say pick a side and work to improve it in 2022.Bret: To which I’d reply that each side should work harder to earn a vote, not assume they already own it.A final note before we say goodbye to this lousy year. Don’t miss my favorite piece in The Times this month, which is Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s fabulous portrait of Si Spiegel, a World War II hero and Christmas tree entrepreneur who’s going strong at 97. A good reminder that mettle and moxie go a long way in a person’s life — and in a country’s, too.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      U.S. Indicts Iranian Hackers in Voter Intimidation Effort

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      The hackers are accused of sending threatening messages to thousands of people after breaking into voter registration systems and a media company.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department indicted two Iranian hackers on Thursday for seeking to influence the 2020 election with a clumsy effort to intimidate voters, just a day after the nation’s cyberdefense authorities warned of an escalating Iranian effort to insert malicious code into the computer networks of hospitals and other critical infrastructure.The hackers, identified in a grand jury indictment handed up in New York as Seyyed Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27, are accused of sending threatening messages to several thousand voters, after breaking into some voter registration systems and at least one media company. Many of the messages sent by the Iranians were designed to look like they were from the Proud Boys, the right-wing extremist group.Law enforcement officials said Facebook messages and emails from the Iranians to Republicans falsely claimed the Democrats were planning to exploit security vulnerabilities in state voter databases to register nonexistent voters. But the hackers also sent tens of thousands of emails to Democrats. They demanded recipients change their party affiliation and vote for President Donald J. Trump.The emails were so badly written, however, that they immediately seemed suspect, and the effort was quickly exposed by Mr. Trump’s own administration. Intelligence officials have long considered the emails to Democrats to be a bit of ham-handed reverse psychology, meant to make the recipients more likely to turn out to vote against Mr. Trump.Law enforcement officials also revealed Thursday that the Iranians had hacked into a media company that provides a content management system for dozens of newspapers, although officials did not reveal the name of the organization.Had they kept access, they might have been able to post fake stories to undermine the election, law enforcement officials said. But the F.B.I. detected the intrusion and notified the company. When the Iranians tried to enter the system the day after the election, they discovered their access was blocked.While the timing seemed coincidental, the indictment was announced after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a bulletin on Wednesday warning of a broad, state-sponsored Iranian campaign to get into American computer networks, including hospitals. The warning was a rare one: The governments of Australia and Britain joined in issuing it, and said that a number of ransomware attacks were being organized by the Iranian government, not just criminal groups.Taken together, the indictment and the warning suggest that the Iranian government is making broader use of its offensive cyber-units, and learning from techniques it is picking up from Russia and elsewhere. The warning did not name which American hospitals or transportation systems were the focus of Iranian attacks.“Our intelligence officials have continually warned that other countries would seek to follow Russia’s 2016 playbook,’’ Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement after the indictment was announced. “Today’s charges and sanctions against several Iranians believed to be behind a cyber campaign to intimidate and influence American voters in the 2020 election are further evidence that attempts to interfere in our elections will continue, and we must all be on guard against them.”The indictment Thursday did not directly state that the two men were working for the Iranian government. Instead, they were employed by a cybersecurity firm that claims to do defensive work for the Iranian government. But U.S. officials have long contended that several such companies focus on offensive cyber activities — from theft of data to sabotaging of networks, often directed at the U.S.In the election case, previously declassified intelligence reports have linked the efforts to Tehran’s government ministries, and suggested that Iran was attempting to use variations of the playbook designed by Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 election.In 2016 and in 2020, intelligence officials concluded Russia was trying to influence the election to benefit Mr. Trump. And while Thursday’s indictment did not specify the goal of the Iranian hackers — beyond sowing divisions among Americans — intelligence officials have repeatedly said that Iranian influence efforts were aimed at hurting Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts.“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” Matthew G. Olsen, who recently took over as head of the National Security Division of the Justice Department, said. “The allegations illustrate how foreign disinformation campaigns operate and seek to influence the American public.”Officials said that the Treasury Department would impose sanctions related to the charges, and rewards would likely be set up for information that would enable the U.S. to arrest the two indicted hackers. But the men are in Iran, and the best officials can hope for is to get them arrested and extradited if they travel outside the country.In a speech earlier this week, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, said one of the main lessons of the government’s 2020 election defense efforts was that multiple foreign governments had tried to influence the outcome.Intelligence officials have said that Russia, Iran and China mounted the biggest efforts to influence American politics in 2020, although Cuba also pushed narratives to denigrate Mr. Trump, the March intelligence report found.“What did we learn? That we had more adversaries. We had more committed adversaries,” General Nakasone said.Other intelligence officials have noted that Russia appeared to hold back from the kind of tactics it used in 2016; instead, the SVR, one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies, focused on the SolarWinds infiltration, altering a type of software used by thousands of companies and government agencies. That gave them access to a far larger group of targets — a technique that China and other countries are also using. More