AOC shakes up Twitch

Plus: Sifting through the Google antitrust coverage

Oct 22, 2020

Today let’s talk about a genuinely novel moment in entertainment and politics — and what might come after it.

Last night, the Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her debut on the Amazon-owned live-streaming network Twitch. Joined at times by her colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Ocasio-Cortez played the hit game Among Us as part of a get-out-the-vote effort ahead of the November 3 election.

It was a smashing debut. Here’s Gene Park in the Washington Post:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) “Among Us” stream is the third most-watched stream by an individual person on Twitch, peaking at about 440,000 concurrent viewers. She maintained well above 300,000 for the three hours she played “Among Us” with about a dozen other gaming influencers and celebrities — as well as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — all of whom streamed on their own and kept the concurrent viewers for the total experience well above half a million.

Viewers of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram live streams — or her viral speeches on the House floor — already knew she is an unusually compelling broadcaster. But her surprise choice to play Among Us, a game in which a player is randomly chosen as an “impostor” and tasked with murdering everyone else aboard aa cartoon spaceship, electrified her fans. (Here’s a two-minute supercut of the stream’s best moments.)

The stream drew fresh attention to the congresswoman’s singular political talent, which both makes excellent use of social platforms (is there an elected official who is better at Twitter?) and transcends them.

In the words of the New York Times’ Kevin Roose: “At the risk of ruining a genuinely delightful thing by over-theorizing it, two sitting members of Congress streaming with Twitch gamers really does feel like a big moment in political communication!” Polygon’s Patricia Hernandez, echoing that sentiment, wrote that AOC’s Twitch stream is “the future of politics.”

There’s nothing wrong with simply enjoying last night for what it was — a rare enjoyable moment in US politics, in which the most talented American politician of her generation found a novel way to connect with the electorate and encourage people to vote. But I would be reluctant to ignore it, for the reason Roose cites. When activists and politicians migrate to new social networks and find outsized success there, a whole raft of consequential events has historically followed.

Think of Barack Obama’s early embrace of Facebook, which he used to great success in both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns to identify supporters and turn them into vocal advocates.

Or think of the Arab Spring, in which the global arrival of Twitter and Facebook allowed messages of freedom and democracy to spread across the Middle East and North Africa, bringing organizers together and helping the movement to coalesce.

In both cases, early enthusiasm for the platforms among progressives was undercut by the subsequent arrival on those platforms of right-wing forces, who often used the platforms even more effectively.

When it came to Facebook campaigning, of course, Obama’s success was eclipsed by Donald Trump, who found a rabid following on the social network and effectively targeted voters there with a seemingly endless variety of micro-targeted ads.

The Arab Spring was a movement designed to topple autocrats, but in the years since autocrats have learned how to use Twitter to effectively undermine pro-democracy movements. They hire troll armies to promote their interests and sow doubt about rivals; they place employees inside Twitter itself and use them to obtain personal information about dissidents.

Twitch is hardly a newcomer to social networking — it was founded in 2011 — but it is relatively new to politics. It was news when Sen. Bernie Sanders joined the platform last year; Republicans have begun dabbling in live streams as well. “The Republican Convention streamed on the platform a couple of months ago,” Tanya Basu noted in MIT Tech Review, “and President Donald Trump has an account, mostly used to stream favorable news segments or air campaign videos.”

The first question is whether politicians will come to see Twitch as an essential broadcast tool in promoting their messages; Ocasio-Cortez’s stream just made that far more likely. (She herself says she’ll be back to broadcast again soon.) The second question is whether the intersection of politics and video games can possibly remain as wholesome as it feels in this moment.

The connection between video games and reactionary politics is well known. It’s not difficult to imagine a crop of future politicians adopting Twitch as their home base, just as a previous one used (and is using) YouTube for the same purpose.

The good news is that when that moment arrives, platforms have already had a lot of relevant experience that Twitch could learn from. In any case, the moment to start preparing is now.

Ten sentences about the Google antitrust case

I spent much of the day reading coverage about yesterday’s big legal news, which I covered for members here. Here are 10 of the most interesting pieces I’ve read so far, boiled down to a single sentence.

Google spends $1 billion a year on carriers to ensure good placement for its search widgets.

Apple and Google worked together as “one company” on the iOS search deal, generating up to $12 billion a year for Apple.

Here’s a close look at how the government’s earlier antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft resembles the case against Google.

Legal experts say the case will hinge on whether a judge buys the government’s argument that Google is dominant because of its exclusionary search deals rather than consumer preferences.

Meet the lawyers taking on Google — and the lawyers defending it.

A group of “lawyers, activists, economists, academics and former corporate insiders” helped lay the groundwork for the case against Google, backed by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and others.

The Washington Post looks at how the lawsuit will test the government’s ability to enforce its antitrust laws, potentially setting up a major precedent.

The New York Times profiles Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai as he prepares for what may be one of the more difficult challenges of his tenure.

Mike Masnick makes the case that the government’s lawsuit is being driven by political interests and cronyism.

Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok may prove more challenging to Google in the long run than an antitrust case, this piece in The Information argues.

The Ratio

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech companies.

⬆️ Trending up: TikTok says it is taking additional steps to remove hate speech from the platform. The company is taking additional steps to reduce the spread of material related to Nazis and white supremacy. (Sam Shead / CNBC)

🔃 Trending sideways: Twitter rolled out its speed bump for retweets, prompting users to add a comment before sharing a post. It adds friction to reduce virality, but conservatives are once again complaining about “censorship.” Because of a prompt. (Jay Peters / The Verge)

⬇️ Trending down: Deleting all your cookies in Chrome didn’t actually delete cookies for Google and YouTube. Google called it a bug, and says a fix is forthcoming. (Jay Peters / The Verge)

Governing

⭐ The police can probably break into your phone. “At least 2,000 law enforcement agencies have tools to get into encrypted smartphones, according to new research,” this report says. Jack Nicas has the details at the New York Times:

At least 49 of the 50 largest U.S. police departments have the tools, according to the records, as do the police and sheriffs in small towns and counties across the country, including Buckeye, Ariz.; Shaker Heights, Ohio; and Walla Walla, Wash. And local law enforcement agencies that don’t have such tools can often send a locked phone to a state or federal crime lab that does.
With more tools in their arsenal, the authorities have used them in an increasing range of cases, from homicides and rapes to drugs and shoplifting, according to the records, which were reviewed by The New York Times. Upturn researchers said the records suggested that U.S. authorities had searched hundreds of thousands of phones over the past five years.

US security agencies are mounting a major effort to prevent Russian interference in the election, despite active discouragement from the president. The initiative is preventing people with links to Russia from entering the country, freezing their assets, sharing intelligence with social networks, and knocking them off the internet. (Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg / Washington Post)

More Spanish-language disinformation is targeting voters as the election nears. The efforts appear to be designed to pit Black and Latino voters against one another, depressing turnout for Democrats. (Patricia Mazzei and Jennifer Medina / New York Times)

The Federal Communications Commission defended its legal authority to make new rules regarding Section 230. Critics on both the left and the right have said the FCC lacks the jurisdiction to do so. (Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica)

Voters in Florida, Alaska, and other states received threatening emails claiming to be from the Proud Boys. By the end of the day, US authorities said that Iran was behind the emails. (Isaac Stanley-Becker and Craig Timberg / Washington Post)

Chinese hackers are targeting the US military and defense industry. The National Security Agency has identified the issue as a critical priority. (Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal)

Colorado’s secretary of state has launched an initiative against disinformation. She’s buying search ads against terms related to hoaxes and doing digital outreach to help voters identify disinformation campaigns. (Nick Corasaniti and Davey Alba / New York Times)

Spammers and scammers are using the election to drum up business on Facebook. The company disclosed a set of related takedowns in a new report on “inauthentic behavior,” which differs from “coordinated inauthentic behavior” in that it lacks a political motivation. (Jack Stubbs / Reuters)

Facebook removed a handful of anti-mask groups based in Canada. They had a little under 40,000 members and are discouraging people from wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (Mack Lamoureux / Vice)

Former members of the notorious pro-Trump forum The_Donald are organizing on Discord, where they continue to push users to promote the president and spread disinformation on Reddit. One Discord server devoted to the banned subreddit has more than 21,000 members. (Ali Breland / Mother Jones)

YouTube posted a strange “week in the life” diary of its news and civics partnership lead during an election year. “7 a.m. — Wake up and scroll through news apps and email newsletters to get caught up on the headlines I’ve missed.” Just host an on-the-record press conference already, please! (YouTube)

Could bringing back unranked feeds reduce cries of censorship among unhappy social network users? Sam Lessin makes the case that it would, as part of this set of ideas about how Facebook and its peers could better self-regulate. (The Information)

Industry

Cameo introduced a new partnership with Sendoso, a platform designed to let business people easily send gifts to clients. Why send chocolates when you can send a $2,500 video greeting from Caitlyn Jenner? (Nat Ives / Wall Street Journal)

Facebook confirmed that it is building a NextDoor competitor called Neighborhoods. I had mentioned the company’s progress on this effort in my big feature last month; NextDoor is preparing for an initial public offering. (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

Twitch streamers have been hit with a rash of DMCA notices. It’s unclear what’s behind the sudden surge in enforcement. (Bijan Stephen / The Verge)

Pinterest added former Disney executive Salaam Coleman Smith to its board. She is the second woman of color to join the board since former since former Chief Operating Officer Francoise Brougher sued the company, saying she was fired for speaking up about discrimination at the company. (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)