I had a pretty cool moment today: I was quoted in The New York Times.
I spoke with the Times about disinformation targeting Black voters ahead of the midterm elections and how technology is changing the speed, scale, and precision of these efforts.
Efforts to suppress or manipulate Black political participation existed long before social media and generative AI. What has changed is the information environment. AI can reduce the time and resources required to produce convincing deceptive content, while social media provides the infrastructure to distribute it widely.
One of the points I made to the Times was about why Black voters continue to be targeted in the first place.
And the manipulation doesn’t always have to look like an obvious lie.
Sometimes it can sound like:
“They never cared about us.”
“Neither side is going to do anything for Black people.”
“Your vote doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Boycott the vote.”
Those messages can draw on legitimate frustration with politics and political institutions. But that frustration can also be deliberately exploited to encourage disengagement.
That’s part of what makes this issue worth paying attention to. The objective isn’t always to change someone’s vote. Sometimes, it’s to convince someone that voting isn’t worth doing at all.
Read the full New York Times Article here.
This conversation is part of the broader work I do at the intersection of technology, policy, and the people and communities affected by both.
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