Russia's information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news.The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg not only sought to pose as American social media users or spread false information from purported news sources, according to new details. They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines. 

Researchers will soon have a chance to study every link shared on Facebook, thanks to a new data set released through a research partnership with Social Science One. Announced earlier in 2018, the partnership brings together independent academics with data from Facebook and funding from independent foundations, hoping to provide new insight into the impact of social media on elections.

Democrats and left-leaning public interest groups are turning up the heat on House Republicans on net neutrality, as they seek to rally internet-savvy voters around the issue ahead of the midterm elections. A group of House Democrats is seeking to force a floor vote on a Senate-passed resolution that would undo the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rollback, restoring the Obama-era rules. “There’s tremendous pressure that’s going to be put on Republicans not to sign,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), who leads the House effort.

Mail.Ru Group, a Russian internet company with links to the Kremlin, was among the firms to which Facebook gave an extension which allowed them to collect data on unknowing users of the social network after a policy change supposedly stopped such collection. Facebook said apps developed by Mail.Ru Group were being looked at as part of the company's wider investigation into the misuse of Facebook user data in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Mail.Ru Group developed hundreds of Facebook apps, some of which were test apps that were not made public.

President Donald Trump’s campaign-style rallies have found a receptive audience at Fox News Channel, which unlike the other cable news networks often carries his speeches live and in their entirety. Four times in the past few weeks, Fox has set aside its usual prime-time programming to air the president speaking live to supporters at events in South Carolina, Minnesota, North Dakota and West Virginia. The network also promised live coverage of a Trump rally July 5 in Montana, where Sen Jon Tester (D-MT) faces a tough fight for re-election.

Republican leaders and lawmakers are setting their sights on a new target as they head into a difficult midterm election: an increasingly-powerful tech industry they view as biased against conservatives.

Even as President Donald Trump holds court in large arenas filled with thousands of cheering supporters, he also has been giving rich financiers and business executives up-close access, helping cultivate the kind of big-money outfit he once derided.

During a daylong public hearing, the Federal Election Commission’s four remaining commissioners — two seats are vacant because President Donald Trump hasn’t appointed anyone to fill them — couldn’t find consensus on how to best drag federal political ad regulations into the Internet age. “I don’t think we’ve gotten very far,” FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter, a Republican, said two hours into the hearing, which featured testimony from 12 representatives of think tanks, activist groups and legal organizations.