vox--2020-09-29--Emma Chamberlain and the business of being relatable

Hello from The Goods ’ twice-weekly newsletter !
On Tuesdays , internet culture reporter Rebecca Jennings uses this space to update you all on what ’ s been going on in the world of TikTok .
Is there something you want to see more of ?
Less of ?
Different of ?
Email rebecca.jennings @ vox.com , and subscribe to The Goods ’ newsletter here .
A video of a day in the life of Emma Chamberlain , a 19-year-old in Los Angeles , has more than six million views on Youtube .
It is not a particularly eventful day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She drives to Trader Joe ’ s , then goes on a run .
At minute 13 , she announces , “ I ’ m probably gon na go lay in bed for the next three hours until I ’ m hungry again.
” It could have been a day in my life , or anyone else ’ s .
Yet the fact that Emma Chamberlain ’ s life could be yours is precisely why people have clicked on her videos a grand total of 1.2 billion times , and why she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ segment of Youtube that thrives on young women doing relatable activities .
Through clever , fast-paced editing and goofy witticisms , Emma , often makeup-free and wearing a hoodie , has made herself endlessly watchable to a generation of kids who identify more with what vlogger they grew up with than their favorite TV show .
Emma is not just the most popular girl on “ Relatable YouTube , ” she is its inventor .
Since a video of herself picking through a dollar store haul went viral in 2017 , she has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people talk on YouTube now , particularly the way they communicate authenticity , ” as a New York Times profile described it .
She treats the camera , and thereby the viewer , as if it is her best friend , a permanent fourth wall off which to bounce asides and throwaway jokes .
Viewers feel as if they know her ; if you were to conduct a study on 21st century parasocial relationships , Emma Chamberlain would be its cleanest example .
The irony is that being professionally relatable has made Emma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for most viewers makes her the very opposite of relatable .
Her revenue from YouTube videos alone could net up to $ 1.7 million per year , in addition to sponsored content deals like her ambassadorship with Louis Vuitton .
Earlier this year , she purchased a $ 4 million home in West Hollywood .
It is obvious why so many brands want to work with her — she ’ s funny , she ’ s pretty , she lends a company an ironic-but-still-friendly face to use as its mascot .
Emma herself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successful YouTubers she has her own line of merch , as well as a collab with a sunglasses brand , and most recently , a line of fair-trade coffee .
Chamberlain Coffee is ostensibly the reason why I was able to interview her last week , in what publicists pitched as a “ Zoom coffee date ” with Emma .
I thought about how someone so good at being relatable would also , of course , make an amazing businessperson , and I thought about how Emma is widely known as one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She has a professional editor now , but before that she ’ d spend 20 to 30 hours working on a single video .
It ’ s clear she takes her work very seriously , despite the lo-fi goofiness that ends up on her channel .
I also thought about how much our interview reminded me of so many conversations I ’ ve had with other “ relatable ” or “ alt ” TikTok stars .
These kids , who seem so bizarrely weird online , whom viewers might think are just turning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , are acutely aware of their personal brands , their engagement metrics , their career growth .
This is not to suggest that it is all an act , or that Emma or anyone else is a phony .
It ’ s to say that coming across as relatable online takes far more work and self-awareness than perfecting a TikTok dance or filming high-budget YouTube pranks .
It is , I would argue , almost a form of art , one that the term “ influencer ” can ’ t really convey .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of thoughts about all this , too .
So here ’ s what we chatted about during our Zoom coffee date , which ultimately ended up being a phone coffee date , because Emma ’ s wifi went out .
Relatable !
I ’ m sitting here having some of your coffee .
It ’ s great !
Was this something you always wanted to do ?
Ever since I was a kid , coffee was a staple in my life .
Lowkey , when I was super young my dad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ morning .
God , I shouldn ’ t say that .
When I got a little bit older , we started going to San Francisco and exploring some of the really cool , artsy coffee shops and we ’ d just talk for hours in there and have fun playing cards .
When I started my YouTube channel , it became such a big part of my brand without me realizing it or meaning to do that .
So when my team was like , “ Do you want to do something with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Yes , that ’ s my dream .
That ’ s all I ’ ve ever wanted.
” You moved to LA from the Bay Area not too long ago and have spoken a little bit about why it can be hard sometimes .
What ’ s it been like ?
I ’ m not the biggest fan of Los Angeles , if I ’ m being completely honest with you .
It ’ s tough to live here and it ’ s a tough place to be , but at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perfect for what I do and I ’ ve met such amazing people .
It ’ s definitely helped with my career 1,000 percent .
[ But ] everyone who does the same thing as you is here , which can make it feel very high school-esque , because there ’ s no escape from the internet .
You log off , go outside , and you just see more people that you were seeing on your phone .
That ’ s really tough for me , because I need that escape .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing for yourself here .
In your hometown , you have that one coffee shop where you can be there for hours and you won ’ t see anyone you know , there ’ s no paparazzi .
It ’ s harder to find that here .
When did you start noticing people like the Hollywood Fix , which has become almost like a TMZ for Gen Z , following you around ?
I had a few experiences about a year ago and that was very jarring to me , but then it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then recently , I think the whole culture of TikTok has made that stuff 10 times crazier .
It ’ s just weird , because when I was younger , who got paparazzi ?
Models , musicians , movie stars , that ’ s it .
It ’ s crazy to see that it ’ s happening to digital influencers as well .
How does it make you feel when you hear girls say they want to be you ?
I mean , of course it ’ s such a compliment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ amazing people in my life and I ’ m so grateful , but at the same time , the grass is always greener .
There ’ s so many things that I struggle with on a day to day basis and there are some struggles that I definitely don ’ t share .
There ’ s definitely months and months on end where I want to be [ someone else ] .
My number one priority in life is genuine relationships and friendships between me and other people .
Without that nothing else @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fame comes backlash .
A lot of the criticism towards you has accused you of no longer being relatable now that you ’ re successful .
Does stuff like that still get to you ?
It bummed me out a lot in the beginning , because I was like , “ Okay , wait a minute , y ’ all — that ’ s not my fault !
” I was just doing this for fun , and so it was out of my control what happened next .
Listen , I get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
But I ’ m still the exact same me that I was when I started my channel , if not a more mature and a better person .
I understand it now .
• Hours before it was scheduled to take effect , a federal judge blocked the Trump order to ban TikTok from U.S. app stores .
Because this is for some reason a neverending story , the next date that a ban could take place is November 12 .
And who knows , perhaps we ’ ll be living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
• Recode ’ s Jason Del Rey explains why Walmart wanted stake in TikTok so badly .
Spoiler : Amazon .
• Here is the horrifying story of how girls on TikTok exposed years ’ worth of abuse at a reform boarding school in Missouri , despite the fact that allegations had been reported for years .
• Jewish teens on TikTok are being inundated with awful anti-Semitic comments , just shortly after the release of a study that claimed nearly two-thirds of millennials and Gen Zers didn ’ t know that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holocaust .
• TikTok is finally cracking down on those awful ads for intermittent fasting and other extreme weight loss diets .
• So-called boring jobs — landscaping , bricklaying , even power washing — are going viral on TikTok .
Having watched several extremely satisfying videos of pools being cleaned , I can confirm .
This is the most realistic portrayal of hot people on TikTok I ’ ve ever seen .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 .

Hello from The Goods’ twice-weekly newsletter! On Tuesdays, internet culture reporter Rebecca Jennings uses this space to update you all on what’s been going on in the world of TikTok. Is there something you want to see more of? Less of? Different of? Email rebecca.jennings@vox.com, and subscribe to The Goods’ newsletter here.
A video of a day in the life of Emma Chamberlain, a 19-year-old in Los Angeles, has more than six million views on Youtube. It is not a particularly eventful day; Emma makes iced coffee and eggs. She drives to Trader Joe’s, then goes on a run. At minute 13, she announces, “I’m probably gonna go lay in bed for the next three hours until I’m hungry again.” It could have been a day in my life, or anyone else’s.
Yet the fact that Emma Chamberlain’s life could be yours is precisely why people have clicked on her videos a grand total of 1.2 billion times, and why she’s the reigning queen of the segment of Youtube that thrives on young women doing relatable activities. Through clever, fast-paced editing and goofy witticisms, Emma, often makeup-free and wearing a hoodie, has made herself endlessly watchable to a generation of kids who identify more with what vlogger they grew up with than their favorite TV show.
Emma is not just the most popular girl on “Relatable YouTube,” she is its inventor. Since a video of herself picking through a dollar store haul went viral in 2017, she has set the tone for “the way people talk on YouTube now, particularly the way they communicate authenticity,” as a New York Times profile described it. She treats the camera, and thereby the viewer, as if it is her best friend, a permanent fourth wall off which to bounce asides and throwaway jokes. Viewers feel as if they know her; if you were to conduct a study on 21st century parasocial relationships, Emma Chamberlain would be its cleanest example.
The irony is that being professionally relatable has made Emma Chamberlain extremely famous and rich, which for most viewers makes her the very opposite of relatable. Her revenue from YouTube videos alone could net up to $1.7 million per year, in addition to sponsored content deals like her ambassadorship with Louis Vuitton. Earlier this year, she purchased a $4 million home in West Hollywood.
It is obvious why so many brands want to work with her — she’s funny, she’s pretty, she lends a company an ironic-but-still-friendly face to use as its mascot. Emma herself is a saleswoman too; like all successful YouTubers she has her own line of merch, as well as a collab with a sunglasses brand, and most recently, a line of fair-trade coffee.
Chamberlain Coffee is ostensibly the reason why I was able to interview her last week, in what publicists pitched as a “Zoom coffee date” with Emma. I thought about how someone so good at being relatable would also, of course, make an amazing businessperson, and I thought about how Emma is widely known as one of the most hardworking vloggers working today. She has a professional editor now, but before that she’d spend 20 to 30 hours working on a single video. It’s clear she takes her work very seriously, despite the lo-fi goofiness that ends up on her channel.
I also thought about how much our interview reminded me of so many conversations I’ve had with other “relatable” or “alt” TikTok stars. These kids, who seem so bizarrely weird online, whom viewers might think are just turning on the camera and doing their thing, are acutely aware of their personal brands, their engagement metrics, their career growth. This is not to suggest that it is all an act, or that Emma or anyone else is a phony. It’s to say that coming across as relatable online takes far more work and self-awareness than perfecting a TikTok dance or filming high-budget YouTube pranks. It is, I would argue, almost a form of art, one that the term “influencer” can’t really convey.
Emma is smart, and she has a lot of thoughts about all this, too. So here’s what we chatted about during our Zoom coffee date, which ultimately ended up being a phone coffee date, because Emma’s wifi went out. Relatable!
I’m sitting here having some of your coffee. It’s great! Was this something you always wanted to do?
Ever since I was a kid, coffee was a staple in my life. Lowkey, when I was super young my dad and I would go to Starbucks every morning. God, I shouldn’t say that.
When I got a little bit older, we started going to San Francisco and exploring some of the really cool, artsy coffee shops and we’d just talk for hours in there and have fun playing cards. When I started my YouTube channel, it became such a big part of my brand without me realizing it or meaning to do that.
So when my team was like, “Do you want to do something with this?” I was like, “Yes, that’s my dream. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
You moved to LA from the Bay Area not too long ago and have spoken a little bit about why it can be hard sometimes. What’s it been like?
I’m not the biggest fan of Los Angeles, if I’m being completely honest with you. It’s tough to live here and it’s a tough place to be, but at the same time, it’s so perfect for what I do and I’ve met such amazing people. It’s definitely helped with my career 1,000 percent.
[But] everyone who does the same thing as you is here, which can make it feel very high school-esque, because there’s no escape from the internet. You log off, go outside, and you just see more people that you were seeing on your phone. That’s really tough for me, because I need that escape.
It’s like there’s nothing for yourself here. In your hometown, you have that one coffee shop where you can be there for hours and you won’t see anyone you know, there’s no paparazzi. It’s harder to find that here.
When did you start noticing people like the Hollywood Fix, which has become almost like a TMZ for Gen Z, following you around?
I had a few experiences about a year ago and that was very jarring to me, but then it kind of stopped for a whole year. Then recently, I think the whole culture of TikTok has made that stuff 10 times crazier. It’s just weird, because when I was younger, who got paparazzi? Models, musicians, movie stars, that’s it. It’s crazy to see that it’s happening to digital influencers as well.
How does it make you feel when you hear girls say they want to be you?
I mean, of course it’s such a compliment. I have an amazing life and have amazing people in my life and I’m so grateful, but at the same time, the grass is always greener. There’s so many things that I struggle with on a day to day basis and there are some struggles that I definitely don’t share. There’s definitely months and months on end where I want to be [someone else]. My number one priority in life is genuine relationships and friendships between me and other people. Without that nothing else matters to me.
Obviously, with fame comes backlash. A lot of the criticism towards you has accused you of no longer being relatable now that you’re successful. Does stuff like that still get to you?
It bummed me out a lot in the beginning, because I was like, “Okay, wait a minute, y’all — that’s not my fault!” I was just doing this for fun, and so it was out of my control what happened next. Listen, I get it. Weird shit has happened to me. But I’m still the exact same me that I was when I started my channel, if not a more mature and a better person. I understand it now.
TikTok in the news
Hours before it was scheduled to take effect, a federal judge blocked the Trump order to ban TikTok from U.S. app stores. Because this is for some reason a neverending story, the next date that a ban could take place is November 12. And who knows, perhaps we’ll be living in an entirely new world by then!
Recode’s Jason Del Rey explains why Walmart wanted stake in TikTok so badly. Spoiler: Amazon.
Here is the horrifying story of how girls on TikTok exposed years’ worth of abuse at a reform boarding school in Missouri, despite the fact that allegations had been reported for years.
Jewish teens on TikTok are being inundated with awful anti-Semitic comments, just shortly after the release of a study that claimed nearly two-thirds of millennials and Gen Zers didn’t know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
TikTok is finally cracking down on those awful ads for intermittent fasting and other extreme weight loss diets.
So-called boring jobs — landscaping, bricklaying, even power washing — are going viral on TikTok. Having watched several extremely satisfying videos of pools being cleaned, I can confirm.
One Last Thing
This is the most realistic portrayal of hot people on TikTok I’ve ever seen.


vox--2020-09-29--Why are you seeing this digital political ad? No one knows!

As November 3 gets closer , election ads are almost impossible to avoid .
And this year , we ’ re seeing more of them than ever online , peppered throughout our Facebook timelines , Google searches , and in Hulu videos .
Some of them may not apply to you , but all of them — like every other online ad — are targeting you .
If you want to find out how or why you ’ re being targeted , good luck .
Most answers are hidden beneath layers of ad technology and data collection that tech companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And unlike TV , print , and mailed political ads , which can ’ t target you nearly as well and are regulated by Federal Election ( FEC ) and the Federal Communications ( FCC ) Commissions , the online political ad world is largely unregulated .
That means it ’ s up to companies like Facebook and Google to make their own rules governing the deluge of political ads we ’ re all seeing , and there ’ s no guarantee they ’ ll make decisions that protect our democracy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital world It ’ s estimated that nearly $ 7 billion dollars will be spent on ads over the 2020 election cycle overall .
A lot of that money is going to television ads , as is the case every year .
But an increasingly large portion of it is paying for digital ads .
Trump ’ s focus on digital ads during the 2016 election was a watershed moment for digital political ads , though it wasn ’ t the first time a presidential candidate made use of them .
Barack Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for its use of digital ads and microtargeting .
It even put ads in video games .
But the Obama campaign only spent about $ 8 million on online ads , and less than $ 500,000 of that went to Facebook .
A lot has changed since then .
The Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on millions of Facebook ads in 2016 , sometimes running tens of thousands of ad variations a day to microtarget potential voters with messages tailored to their interests .
The effectiveness of Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either way , 2020 campaigns are devoting a lot more time and money to their digital ad strategies than they did in 2016 .
Madeline Kriger , a director at a Democratic Super PAC called Priorities USA , told Recode that in 2016 , her PAC spent the vast majority of its ad money on television .
She said that was almost “ universally true among Democratic groups at that time.
” But it isn ’ t anymore .
Priorities spent the last three years practicing and refining its digital strategy for 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operations in-house rather than rely on an outside group to do the buying and placement .
“ We have now built out an entire internal ad-buying team , ” Kriger said .
On the other end of the spectrum are the smaller , less-moneyed campaigns that benefit from targeted digital ads that give them access to potential voters that may be receptive to specific messages , and often cost less than other mediums .
A campaign for a state senate seat , for example , can target Facebook ads stressing its candidate ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constituents — which is exactly what Martha Marx , a Democrat running in Connecticut Senate District 20 , is doing .
“ I target each ad to different groups depending on the ad or need at the time , while simultaneously running some ads district-wide , ” Jason Ortiz , Marx ’ s campaign manager , told Recode .
“ I tend to oversample folks who meet the same demographic as the messenger in the ad.
” Facebook and YouTube ads are a great way to reach voters , Ortiz said , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a television ad .
The campaign has spent about $ 15,000 on digital ads during this campaign cycle , Ortiz said .
Marx ’ s opponent , incumbent Republican Paul Formica , has only spent a few thousand dollars so far according to Facebook and Google records .
In what should be a close race — two years ago , Marx lost to Formica by the slim margin of about 1,500 votes out of the 40,000 cast — spending thousands more than her opponent on campaign ads could give her the edge .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Google .
Now , they ’ re frequently running ads on streaming platforms like Hulu and Pandora , and on ad networks like Verizon Media .
They ’ re finding alternate ways in , like how Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg paid Instagram influencers to spread the word about his campaign on their accounts , or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ’ s campaign ’ s Animal Crossing yard signs ( Biden ’ s campaign told Recode that it didn ’ t pay Nintendo to be able to include the signs in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an ad so much as they are the digital equivalent of campaign yard signs ) .
“ It ’ s a real mess ” : Digital platforms get to make their own rules Without online-specific regulations , platforms are making their own rules , which can vary widely , are voluntary , and can be changed at any time .
Some platforms have chosen not to allow any political ads at all , including Twitter , LinkedIn , TikTok , and Spotify .
Others have clamped down on who can buy political ads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Reddit has a library of candidate or issue-based ads , manually reviews all of them , forbids deceptive ads , requires certain disclosures , and only allows ads from candidates for federal office .
Snapchat ’ s political ads policy forbids misleading or deceptive ads , and the company also provides a list of political ads , including the audiences they target , in a downloadable spreadsheet .
As for the big guys : Google has placed several restrictions on ad targeting — only location , age , and gender can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transparency section , which includes a library of paid ads .
Facebook , which recently announced a moratorium on new political ads in the week before the election , also has a transparency section that includes a political ad library , but it lets political ads target users the same way most of its other ad categories can .
The company has also said it won ’ t forbid politicians from lying in ads , with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , “ in a democracy , I believe that people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what politicians that they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.
” Facebook does limit ad targeting on ads for housing , employment , and credit , but that ’ s only because of the company ’ s 2019 settlement with civil rights groups over how the platform could be used to enable illegally discriminatory ads — for instance , by targeting job ads to young white men only .
( The 2016 Trump campaign made use of these options by targeting anti-Clinton ads to young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sexual assault against Clinton ’ s husband and her 1996 “ superpredators ” comment , respectively . )
Facebook has since removed race and ethnicity as an advertising target , but there are ways to get around this .
Facebook itself says it “ encourag [ es ] advertisers to use other targeting options such as language or culture to reach people that are interested in multicultural content.
” Facebook does require any entity that places an ad regarding social issues , elections , or politics to submit to various identity verification @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on those ads .
Its ad library says who is paying for which ads , how much they ’ re paying for them , and the age , gender , and location of users who saw the ads .
But it does not — and will not — provide specifics on advertisers ’ targeting requests .
“ I do give [ Google and Facebook ] credit for spending the last couple of years building those out to be more transparent than what they started out as , and actually helpful for understanding what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kriger said .
But , she points out , there are many other places for digital ads now that aren ’ t transparent at all because they ’ re not legally required to be .
“ You really don ’ t know what a campaign or an organization like ours , frankly , is doing , ” she said .
Those places include ad-supported streaming video services like Hulu , Sling , Roku , and Tubi , which have replaced broadcast television for many Americans and promote their audience-targeting abilities to potential advertisers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than their broadcast peers and have fewer disclosure requirements , such as keeping public archives that say who paid for an ad , how much they paid , and where and when the ad appeared .
A recent report from Mozilla shows that they haven ’ t done much on their own to promote that transparency .
“ It ’ s a real mess , with a lot of spending not being disclosed , and it really shows the need for a uniform national standard , ” Adav Noti , senior director of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Campaign Legal Center , told Recode .
What digital political ad rules could look like It wasn ’ t until the 2016 election cycle that the federal government started to take a serious look at political ad disclosure rules and whether they needed to be updated for the digital world , Noti said .
But almost four years and another presidential election cycle later , the federal efforts have gone nowhere .
One attempt , the bipartisan Honest Ads Act , would have extended television and radio ad rules to cover the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep a public file of political ads , and forbade foreign actors from purchasing digital political ads .
That bill was initially proposed in 2017 and reintroduced with bipartisan and bicameral support in 2019 .
It passed the House but Sen. Mitch McConnell has so far refused to put it up for a vote in the Senate .
The Federal Election Commission could also update or clarify its rules to better reflect the online era , but it needs at least four of its six members to agree on what those updated rules @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only three members .
FEC members are appointed by the president .
In the absence of federal rules , some states have stepped up with their own laws .
Washington state passed its own transparency legislation , prompting Facebook and Google to forbid political ads in the state rather than follow the requirements .
Showing how difficult it can be to ban something on the internet in a particular region , political ads have shown up in those states anyway .
Maryland ’ s attempt to create a similar law was struck down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the First Amendment .
While digital political ads are required to follow some political ad disclaimer rules , that ’ s not enough for advocates who believe the lack of regulation makes it impossible to monitor them for potential abuses .
An ad archive requirement and targeting disclosures would add necessary transparency and update the rules for the digital age , experts say .
“ If you have an archive , then law enforcement can look at the archive to look for leads on potential law-breaking , or watchdog groups like ours can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ferret out sketchy behavior , ” Noti said .
“ Obviously , political opponents can look at the archive and engage in counter-speech if there are lies or misinformation being spread.
” Noti also believes that transparency should include information about how the ad was targeted .
“ You want to know what criteria were used to target that ad , ” Noti said .
“ That ’ s a much more relevant piece of information for digital ads.
” Why am I seeing this political ad ?
You ’ ll probably never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relevant piece of information that Facebook refuses to provide , which means that the ways campaigns are targeting potential voters on Facebook and its properties ( including Instagram and the audience network , i.e .
ads that show up on outside websites ) remain unknown to the people who are seeing them — not to mention opposing campaigns and watchdog groups .
Who sees those ads are determined by Facebook ’ s algorithms — also secret — which use the immense amount of data the platform harvests from its users ’ activities both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many campaign websites ) .
Alternately , you might be included in what ’ s called a “ lookalike audience , ” where an advertiser sends Facebook a list of users it thinks will be receptive to its ad , and Facebook sends the ad to a much larger audience that mirrors some of the source group ’ s qualities in the hope that they will be similarly responsive .
You can stop some of Facebook ’ s targeting by turning personalized ads off on Facebook ( Google also gives you this option @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — but you can ’ t stop all of it .
Facebook can still figure out your approximate location and target location-based ads to you based on your IP address , for instance , so you ’ ll still see ads for local candidates .
And there are other ways campaigns can target you on Facebook ( and other platforms , like Snapchat ) without even using their targeting services .
They may create audience lists , or , as Facebook calls them , “ custom audiences , ” which may include personally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name , or other data points .
( Google doesn ’ t allow audience lists to be used for political ads . )
Those are then matched to user profiles , and the ads are sent to them .
So even for all of Snapchat ’ s transparency about political ad targeting requests , it can ’ t tell you any targeting that comes from audience lists .
Those lists may come from information you knowingly and willingly supplied , like signing up for a campaign ’ s mailing list , but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data brokers , which have their myriad ways of acquiring that information , often without your knowledge .
Or they might come from public voter files , which can have a lot of information about you , including your age and address .
Campaigns have been relying on these databases for decades — long before Facebook ever existed — but the internet has made them that much more useful .
All this makes it almost impossible to truly know why you ’ re seeing a certain ad on your own timeline .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the audience they ’ re asking the social media company to reach is the one that sees their ads .
“ It ’ s very much a black box , honestly , ” Kriger , of Priorities USA , said .
For her part , Kriger wants to see more regulation of digital ads , rather than the current patchwork of self-imposed , inconsistent , and ever-changing policies her PAC has to navigate now to get its digital ads in front of voters .
Priorities USA had one ad accepted by Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Verizon , and another ad Facebook erroneously rejected .
On the other side of the aisle , misleading ads about mail-in voting from a mysterious group associated with Republican causes were pulled from Facebook but allowed to stay on Google .
Even if digital paid political ad legislation that made every side happy were passed , there ’ s a whole other side that it won ’ t address : all the things that politicians , campaigns , and committees can say on social media that spread to as many people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those platforms are designed to do .
Trump can ’ t buy an ad on Twitter , but he can and does tweet ads to his 86 million followers all day long , and he doesn ’ t have to pay a penny to do it .
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .
Will you help keep Vox free for all ?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today from as little as $ 3 .

As November 3 gets closer, election ads are almost impossible to avoid. And this year, we’re seeing more of them than ever online, peppered throughout our Facebook timelines, Google searches, and in Hulu videos. Some of them may not apply to you, but all of them — like every other online ad — are targeting you.
If you want to find out how or why you’re being targeted, good luck. Most answers are hidden beneath layers of ad technology and data collection that tech companies aren’t legally required to disclose. And unlike TV, print, and mailed political ads, which can’t target you nearly as well and are regulated by Federal Election (FEC) and the Federal Communications (FCC) Commissions, the online political ad world is largely unregulated. That means it’s up to companies like Facebook and Google to make their own rules governing the deluge of political ads we’re all seeing, and there’s no guarantee they’ll make decisions that protect our democracy.
Political ads are firmly entrenched in the digital world
It’s estimated that nearly $7 billion dollars will be spent on ads over the 2020 election cycle overall. A lot of that money is going to television ads, as is the case every year. But an increasingly large portion of it is paying for digital ads. Trump’s focus on digital ads during the 2016 election was a watershed moment for digital political ads, though it wasn’t the first time a presidential candidate made use of them. Barack Obama’s 2008 run was widely praised for its use of digital ads and microtargeting. It even put ads in video games. But the Obama campaign only spent about $8 million on online ads, and less than $500,000 of that went to Facebook. A lot has changed since then.
The Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on millions of Facebook ads in 2016, sometimes running tens of thousands of ad variations a day to microtarget potential voters with messages tailored to their interests. The effectiveness of Trump’s digital operation is up for debate; either way, 2020 campaigns are devoting a lot more time and money to their digital ad strategies than they did in 2016.
Madeline Kriger, a director at a Democratic Super PAC called Priorities USA, told Recode that in 2016, her PAC spent the vast majority of its ad money on television. She said that was almost “universally true among Democratic groups at that time.” But it isn’t anymore. Priorities spent the last three years practicing and refining its digital strategy for 2020, including bringing much of its ad operations in-house rather than rely on an outside group to do the buying and placement.
“We have now built out an entire internal ad-buying team,” Kriger said.
On the other end of the spectrum are the smaller, less-moneyed campaigns that benefit from targeted digital ads that give them access to potential voters that may be receptive to specific messages, and often cost less than other mediums. A campaign for a state senate seat, for example, can target Facebook ads stressing its candidate’s concern for the elderly to older constituents — which is exactly what Martha Marx, a Democrat running in Connecticut Senate District 20, is doing.
“I target each ad to different groups depending on the ad or need at the time, while simultaneously running some ads district-wide,” Jason Ortiz, Marx’s campaign manager, told Recode. “I tend to oversample folks who meet the same demographic as the messenger in the ad.”
Facebook and YouTube ads are a great way to reach voters, Ortiz said, and at a fraction of the cost of a television ad.
The campaign has spent about $15,000 on digital ads during this campaign cycle, Ortiz said. Marx’s opponent, incumbent Republican Paul Formica, has only spent a few thousand dollars so far according to Facebook and Google records. In what should be a close race — two years ago, Marx lost to Formica by the slim margin of about 1,500 votes out of the 40,000 cast — spending thousands more than her opponent on campaign ads could give her the edge.
But some campaigns are expanding beyond Facebook and Google. Now, they’re frequently running ads on streaming platforms like Hulu and Pandora, and on ad networks like Verizon Media. They’re finding alternate ways in, like how Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg paid Instagram influencers to spread the word about his campaign on their accounts, or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign’s Animal Crossing yard signs (Biden’s campaign told Recode that it didn’t pay Nintendo to be able to include the signs in the game, so these are not an ad so much as they are the digital equivalent of campaign yard signs).
“It’s a real mess”: Digital platforms get to make their own rules
Without online-specific regulations, platforms are making their own rules, which can vary widely, are voluntary, and can be changed at any time.
Some platforms have chosen not to allow any political ads at all, including Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Spotify. Others have clamped down on who can buy political ads and how they have to present them. Reddit has a library of candidate or issue-based ads, manually reviews all of them, forbids deceptive ads, requires certain disclosures, and only allows ads from candidates for federal office. Snapchat’s political ads policy forbids misleading or deceptive ads, and the company also provides a list of political ads, including the audiences they target, in a downloadable spreadsheet.
As for the big guys: Google has placed several restrictions on ad targeting — only location, age, and gender can be used — and has a political ad transparency section, which includes a library of paid ads. Facebook, which recently announced a moratorium on new political ads in the week before the election, also has a transparency section that includes a political ad library, but it lets political ads target users the same way most of its other ad categories can. The company has also said it won’t forbid politicians from lying in ads, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “in a democracy, I believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.”
Facebook does limit ad targeting on ads for housing, employment, and credit, but that’s only because of the company’s 2019 settlement with civil rights groups over how the platform could be used to enable illegally discriminatory ads — for instance, by targeting job ads to young white men only. (The 2016 Trump campaign made use of these options by targeting anti-Clinton ads to young women and Black people that contained allegations of sexual assault against Clinton’s husband and her 1996 “superpredators” comment, respectively.)
Facebook has since removed race and ethnicity as an advertising target, but there are ways to get around this. Facebook itself says it “encourag[es] advertisers to use other targeting options such as language or culture to reach people that are interested in multicultural content.”
Facebook does require any entity that places an ad regarding social issues, elections, or politics to submit to various identity verification measures, and to put certain disclosures on those ads. Its ad library says who is paying for which ads, how much they’re paying for them, and the age, gender, and location of users who saw the ads. But it does not — and will not — provide specifics on advertisers’ targeting requests.
“I do give [Google and Facebook] credit for spending the last couple of years building those out to be more transparent than what they started out as, and actually helpful for understanding what various political actors are doing,” Kriger said. But, she points out, there are many other places for digital ads now that aren’t transparent at all because they’re not legally required to be.
“You really don’t know what a campaign or an organization like ours, frankly, is doing,” she said.
Those places include ad-supported streaming video services like Hulu, Sling, Roku, and Tubi, which have replaced broadcast television for many Americans and promote their audience-targeting abilities to potential advertisers. Those services are far less transparent than their broadcast peers and have fewer disclosure requirements, such as keeping public archives that say who paid for an ad, how much they paid, and where and when the ad appeared. A recent report from Mozilla shows that they haven’t done much on their own to promote that transparency.
“It’s a real mess, with a lot of spending not being disclosed, and it really shows the need for a uniform national standard,” Adav Noti, senior director of trial litigation and chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center, told Recode.
What digital political ad rules could look like
It wasn’t until the 2016 election cycle that the federal government started to take a serious look at political ad disclosure rules and whether they needed to be updated for the digital world, Noti said. But almost four years and another presidential election cycle later, the federal efforts have gone nowhere. One attempt, the bipartisan Honest Ads Act, would have extended television and radio ad rules to cover the internet, required large digital platforms to keep a public file of political ads, and forbade foreign actors from purchasing digital political ads. That bill was initially proposed in 2017 and reintroduced with bipartisan and bicameral support in 2019. It passed the House but Sen. Mitch McConnell has so far refused to put it up for a vote in the Senate.
The Federal Election Commission could also update or clarify its rules to better reflect the online era, but it needs at least four of its six members to agree on what those updated rules would be, and it currently has only three members. FEC members are appointed by the president.
In the absence of federal rules, some states have stepped up with their own laws. Washington state passed its own transparency legislation, prompting Facebook and Google to forbid political ads in the state rather than follow the requirements. Showing how difficult it can be to ban something on the internet in a particular region, political ads have shown up in those states anyway. Maryland’s attempt to create a similar law was struck down by a federal appeals court for violating the First Amendment.
While digital political ads are required to follow some political ad disclaimer rules, that’s not enough for advocates who believe the lack of regulation makes it impossible to monitor them for potential abuses. An ad archive requirement and targeting disclosures would add necessary transparency and update the rules for the digital age, experts say.
“If you have an archive, then law enforcement can look at the archive to look for leads on potential law-breaking, or watchdog groups like ours can look at the archive and try to ferret out sketchy behavior,” Noti said. “Obviously, political opponents can look at the archive and engage in counter-speech if there are lies or misinformation being spread.”
Noti also believes that transparency should include information about how the ad was targeted.
“You want to know what criteria were used to target that ad,” Noti said. “That’s a much more relevant piece of information for digital ads.”
Why am I seeing this political ad? You’ll probably never know.
But it’s a relevant piece of information that Facebook refuses to provide, which means that the ways campaigns are targeting potential voters on Facebook and its properties (including Instagram and the audience network, i.e. ads that show up on outside websites) remain unknown to the people who are seeing them — not to mention opposing campaigns and watchdog groups. Who sees those ads are determined by Facebook’s algorithms — also secret — which use the immense amount of data the platform harvests from its users’ activities both on Facebook and off (including on many campaign websites). Alternately, you might be included in what’s called a “lookalike audience,” where an advertiser sends Facebook a list of users it thinks will be receptive to its ad, and Facebook sends the ad to a much larger audience that mirrors some of the source group’s qualities in the hope that they will be similarly responsive.
You can stop some of Facebook’s targeting by turning personalized ads off on Facebook (Google also gives you this option, as do most other platforms) — but you can’t stop all of it.
Facebook can still figure out your approximate location and target location-based ads to you based on your IP address, for instance, so you’ll still see ads for local candidates. And there are other ways campaigns can target you on Facebook (and other platforms, like Snapchat) without even using their targeting services. They may create audience lists, or, as Facebook calls them, “custom audiences,” which may include personally identifiable information like your email address, name, or other data points. (Google doesn’t allow audience lists to be used for political ads.) Those are then matched to user profiles, and the ads are sent to them. So even for all of Snapchat’s transparency about political ad targeting requests, it can’t tell you any targeting that comes from audience lists.
Those lists may come from information you knowingly and willingly supplied, like signing up for a campaign’s mailing list, but they might also come from information purchased through data brokers, which have their myriad ways of acquiring that information, often without your knowledge. Or they might come from public voter files, which can have a lot of information about you, including your age and address. Campaigns have been relying on these databases for decades — long before Facebook ever existed — but the internet has made them that much more useful.
All this makes it almost impossible to truly know why you’re seeing a certain ad on your own timeline. Even the campaigns themselves have to trust Facebook that the audience they’re asking the social media company to reach is the one that sees their ads.
“It’s very much a black box, honestly,” Kriger, of Priorities USA, said.
For her part, Kriger wants to see more regulation of digital ads, rather than the current patchwork of self-imposed, inconsistent, and ever-changing policies her PAC has to navigate now to get its digital ads in front of voters. Priorities USA had one ad accepted by Facebook that was rejected by Google, Hulu, and Verizon, and another ad Facebook erroneously rejected. On the other side of the aisle, misleading ads about mail-in voting from a mysterious group associated with Republican causes were pulled from Facebook but allowed to stay on Google.
Even if digital paid political ad legislation that made every side happy were passed, there’s a whole other side that it won’t address: all the things that politicians, campaigns, and committees can say on social media that spread to as many people as possible because that’s what those platforms are designed to do. Trump can’t buy an ad on Twitter, but he can and does tweet ads to his 86 million followers all day long, and he doesn’t have to pay a penny to do it.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.


vox--2020-09-29--What Biden can do to fix Trump’s Covid-19 mess

If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump this November and ends up in the Oval Office in January , he ’ ll quickly face one of the gravest challenges any president has seen in the modern era : Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be dead from Covid-19 .
Public trust in scientific and government institutions will be depleted .
If the fall and winter goes as badly as some experts fear , coronavirus outbreaks may be at a new peak .
And if a vaccine gets approved , it will still need to be distributed to hundreds of millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s immediate job would be fixing the mess left behind by his predecessor — one that ’ s left America with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world and , as of September , more daily Covid-19 deaths than all but two developed countries .
Experts say these problems are fixable , but fixing them will largely come down to political will .
The policy solutions are things that we ’ ve all heard about throughout the pandemic : aggressive testing and tracing to contain new outbreaks .
Mask-wearing to slow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support for those affected by the epidemic , at once providing financial support and making social distancing more feasible .
“ It ’ s not rocket science .
It ’ s not that we need some new thing that hasn ’ t been thought of before , ” Jen Kates , director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation , told me .
“ There are things that have been done in some cases , or can be done .
But if there was a stronger , coordinated federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difference .
It ’ s happened in other countries.
” Another part of Biden ’ s job will be to , in effect , repair Americans ’ trust in science — bolstering public health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) and the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) , widely considered the gold standard of public health agencies in the world before the pandemic .
Biden will also have to prepare the country for the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine that could take months if not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t just discovering a safe and effective vaccine ; many experts , in fact , are hopeful the world will do that by the end of 2020 .
The difficulty will be figuring out how to quickly produce and distribute up to hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine to the general public — an unprecedented effort .
That will also require persuading the public to take the vaccine , which could be particularly challenging coming off the heels of a highly contentious presidential election .
Biden , for his part , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His website promises to adopt a masking mandate and boost testing and tracing .
His campaign has vowed to “ listen to science ” and “ restore trust , transparency , common purpose , and accountability to our government.
” And he ’ s promised to “ plan for the effective , equitable distribution of treatments and vaccines.
” Trump could do all of this , too .
But there ’ s very little faith among experts that Trump will change his current approach to the pandemic , especially if he wins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely continue doing what he ’ s done : deliberately downplaying the pandemic , demanding states reopen far too quickly , punting testing and tracing to local and state governments with more limited resources , mocking masking , and continuing to try to politicize the CDC and FDA .
That failed response helps explain the US ’ s current Covid-19 outbreak , leading the country to more than 200,000 deaths from the disease — by far the highest recorded death toll in the world .
When controlling for population , the US hasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Covid-19 , but it ’ s among the top 20 percent for developed nations , and has seven times the death rate as the median developed country .
If the US had the same Covid-19 death rate as , say , Canada , more than 120,000 more Americans would likely be alive today .
That damage can ’ t be reversed .
Those 200,000 deaths are on the US ’ s record forever .
But Biden , at least , could take actions that would help prevent America ’ s outbreak from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policies we know work : Testing , tracing , masks , and social distancing There are problems in the world with really difficult or unknowable answers .
That ’ s not as true for Covid-19 : While there ’ s a lot about the coronavirus we ’ re still learning , there are many policy approaches that we know work and the US hasn ’ t really embraced .
This is , then , more a matter of will than knowledge — which is something that Biden , especially if he has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Testing is among those proven policy approaches .
When paired with contact tracing , more testing can help public health officials detect outbreaks , get the infected to isolate and the infected ’ s close contacts to quarantine , and use broader public health measures as needed .
This is an approach that has worked well in many other developed countries , from Germany to South Korea to New Zealand .
The US , however , has struggled to build up its testing capacity .
It ’ s made big improvements since the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hasn ’ t increased above 1 million tests a day — far lower than experts say is needed , given the country ’ s large epidemic overall .
As a result , the percentage of tests coming back positive , which experts use to measure testing capacity , stubbornly remains at 5 percent or more ; it should be , experts suggest , far below 5 percent and preferably below even 3 percent .
It can still take days to get test results back , and that can spike to weeks if demand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is high .
According to experts , part of the problem is the US never fundamentally fixed supply line problems — with shortages popping up for swabs , reagents , testing kits , and other needed equipment throughout the pandemic .
There was also an economic disincentive to building out capacity too much : If a lab , for example , massively scales up its coronavirus testing , but the pandemic is over in a few years , it will be left with a lot of infrastructure it doesn ’ t use or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sink .
A Biden administration could address these problems , using the powers of the federal government to coordinate the supply line , maintain its stability , and guarantee that any businesses and organizations will be made whole for investments into coronavirus testing .
To do all of that , the country needs a national plan — which it currently lacks .
There ’ s a chance the supply problem fixes itself .
With the development and mass production of new antigen tests that don ’ t have to go through a lab @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to many more tests that also return results within minutes instead of hours or days .
Compared to the hold-ups with the current PCR tests that go through labs or hospitals , it would be a welcome change .
Still , there would be remaining questions about how to deploy and distribute those new tests based on equity and need — questions that a national plan could address .
After that , the US would still face another problem : how to actually use those tests .
That ’ s where contact tracing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” track down newly infected people and their close contacts to convince them to isolate and quarantine .
Earlier this year , Crystal Watson , senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security , projected that the US would need at least 100,000 contact tracers .
She estimated the US still has fewer than half of that number .
Since Watson ’ s original estimate , Covid-19 outbreaks in the US have also gotten much worse and more widespread .
That presents two major problems : First , the US now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ originally estimated .
Second , it ’ s now likely impossible for contact tracing to really bring down the epidemic on its own , because there are just way too many cases for even a massive team of tracers to track down and contain .
So while a large federal investment in a contact tracing workforce and equipment could help , it probably won ’ t be enough .
“ We really have to take other measures to bring down transmission in order for contact tracing to be effective , ” Watson told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ masks .
The scientific evidence for masking has gotten much stronger since the start of the coronavirus pandemic , with multiple studies linking the widespread use of masks and new mask mandates to drops in Covid-19 cases and deaths .
One study in Health Affairs suggested that , with caveats that this is just an approximation , “ 230,000-450,000 COVID-19 cases may have been averted on the basis of when states passed these mandates.
” If mandates were nationwide instead of left to a minority of states at the time , it stands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much bigger .
Whether the federal government could impose a mask mandate on its own gets into legally dicey territory .
But a Biden administration and Congress could use financial incentives to encourage cities and states to adopt masking mandates and provide extra resources to enforce them .
That could get the remaining 16 states without a mask mandate , or at least some of the municipalities in those states , to adopt the policy .
Just having a president who is unequivocal about the benefits of masking and consistently wears a mask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also signal to the rest of the country that this is the right thing to do .
It ’ s “ just the public image of a responsible adult doing what they ’ re supposed to do , ” Cedric Dark , an emergency medicine physician at the Baylor College of Medicine , told me .
Even with all these measures in place , the US will have to continue social distancing to some degree .
No one wants this , but , depending on how bad fall and winter outbreaks get , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may have to bring back lockdowns .
The federal government can provide clearer guidance on how and when to do this .
It can also , with Congress ’ s backing , pass legislation that financially supports people affected by lockdowns .
A commonly cited idea is a bailout for bars , restaurants , and other businesses , which would not only help keep these employers and their employees afloat but make the negatives of closing down much more tolerable and , therefore , make closing down easier and more likely if it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus .
Ultimately , this could benefit the economy by mitigating the need for such harsh social distancing efforts .
A preliminary study from the 1918 flu pandemic found that cities that took more aggressive action against outbreaks back then emerged stronger economically .
Germany and others have similarly seen their restaurant businesses recover by controlling the coronavirus .
As Watson put it , “ In order for our economy to recover , we really do need to resource our public health response more effectively.
” Again , none of this is really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often joked that we were having the exact same conversations now that we had back in the spring and summer .
But the US hasn ’ t fully committed to these kinds of policies — and a Biden administration could .
Under Trump , and particularly throughout this pandemic , trust in many institutions has dwindled .
This has applied even to American institutions that were in the past considered the best of the best in the world for public health , such as the CDC and FDA .
The country needs “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trust science again , ” Dark said .
“ My colleagues don ’ t trust anything coming out of the CDC now , due to how politicized it ’ s been.
” A report from the Covid-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public ’ s Policy Preferences Across States , based on a 50-state survey on Covid-19 , captured the trends : Across the country , trust in “ doctors and hospitals , ” “ scientists and researchers , ” and especially the CDC has fallen .
Trust in all of these is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in either Biden or Trump — but it ’ s a concerning trend .
Among different political and demographic groups , trust can be even lower , too .
“ Six months ago , the FDA and CDC were shorthands for gold-standard scientific advice , ” Ashish Jha , dean of the Brown University School of Public Health , told me .
That ’ s changed , he lamented .
Some of this reflects genuine failures by these institutions .
The CDC and FDA both played roles in the US ’ s testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tests , and the FDA dragging its feet in approving more testing from private and independent labs — leading to what ’ s been widely called a “ lost month ” for testing in February .
The CDC was also slow to recommend masks , then failed to admit to messing up and explain its about-face on the issue .
The FDA , meanwhile , has acted in ways that seem politically motivated rather than based on rigorous evidence , such as when it allowed , before warning against , hydroxychloroquine , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about .
Although the CDC and FDA are supposed to stand above partisan politics to help maintain their credibility , Trump and his administration have actively meddled in their affairs and work .
Trump and his political cronies have , for example , repeatedly pushed the CDC to do things solely to support Trump ’ s unproven claims about Covid-19 — forcing the agency to briefly recommend less testing , loosen its guidelines for reopening , and delay studies that contradict the president .
All of that has called into question just how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this will take time , but it ’ s fairly straightforward : Biden and the political actors in his administration should back off , allowing scientists to take a leading role in these agencies and the US ’ s Covid-19 response in general .
Carlos del Rio , executive associate dean of the Emory University School of Medicine , put this simply : “ Pay attention to science .
Let the science guide the response , not the politics.
” That includes giving these institutions control of the public messaging .
While Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House ’ s coronavirus task force , Biden could put a scientist or public health official in charge .
While Trump sidelined the CDC after Nancy Messonnier , director of the CDC ’ s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases , warned in February that “ disruption to everyday life might be severe ” due to Covid-19 , Biden could allow the agency and its experts to speak plainly and truthfully to the public .
That should also translate to the policy level .
When the CDC makes recommendations , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Trump has , undermine the guidelines or force the agency to change them .
When scientists are recommending a pivot in the country ’ s approach , that should be seriously considered , even if it contradicts what the administration said or did in the past , while clearly and transparently explaining why a change is needed .
“ The CDC has the expertise to lead us in this pandemic , ” Jorge Salinas , an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa , told me .
“ We just need to ask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the public time and time again that the country ’ s response to Covid-19 isn ’ t driven by politics but by science .
It ’ s an admittedly difficult task for a country that ’ s consumed by politics and polarization at every level , but it ’ s something , experts said , that ’ s simply necessary to improve America ’ s response to the coronavirus .
3 ) Prepare the country for a months-long rollout of a vaccine If we get a little lucky , there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a proven , safe , and effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year .
It would be an incredible achievement — the fastest turnaround on a vaccine for a major disease in human history .
But that won ’ t be the end .
After a vaccine makes it through the last rounds of research necessary to get FDA approval , it ’ ll have to be distributed to potentially more than 300 million people in the US alone .
Given that some of these vaccines will require two doses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of doses of the medication — something that the country simply hasn ’ t done at the scale and speed that the pandemic demands .
There ’ s already a lot of work , from both governments and private actors like Bill Gates , to manufacture all those doses .
It ’ s possible , even likely , that the current work isn ’ t enough — and that will demand more action and more funds by a Biden administration .
After that , there will be tough questions about who gets priority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first responders and health care workers , at least , should get a vaccine first .
Beyond that , there are genuinely difficult questions : Should older adults get priority because they ’ re more vulnerable ?
Should essential workers ?
What about younger people , who seem to be behind the country ’ s most recent large outbreaks ?
“ It gets complicated , ” Jha acknowledged .
Another element will be persuading the public to actually take a vaccine .
If a vaccine is 50 to 70 percent effective , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that close to 100 percent of the population will need to take one to reach true herd immunity .
That will be a tall order as the country deals not just with traditional , unscientific anti-vaxxer sentiments but also more nuanced concerns about whether the current politicized , fast process coronavirus vaccines are going through can really test adequately for safety .
Different surveys have found a third to half of Americans don ’ t plan to or don ’ t know if they ’ ll get a coronavirus vaccine .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a push to actually come up with a really good communications plan , ” Watson said , “ but also to just have a general dialogue with people as you go along about what the process has been like for creating a vaccine , what standards have been upheld , and the results of the safety and efficacy trials.
” Breaking through those concerns will require research and surveys to subsequently build a massive communications campaign that will try to push people to get vaccinated .
This will be a huge undertaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , depending on if a new administration can rebuild trust in science and depoliticize its public health institutions .
All of this could take a long time .
Experts were unanimous in arguing that getting a vaccine by the end of 2020 , should that happen , won ’ t be the end of the pandemic .
They said that getting a vaccine out there could take at least months .
Some spoke in terms of years , well into 2022 or 2023 .
“ President Biden and Vice President [ Kamala ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , should understand they will be dealing with Covid for much of their first term , ” Jha said .
“ It will continue to come up as an issue in the next midterms .
It ’ s not going away.
” To put it another way : If Biden takes office , it ’ s possible a vaccine will finally present some kind of finish line in this pandemic .
But we might quickly realize that the finish line is still a few months or years away .
And that will make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vaccine — and all the other steps needed to contain Covid-19 in the months and years ahead — necessary .
With hundreds of thousands of Americans already dead , it ’ s the most important task Biden should prepare for right now .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump this November and ends up in the Oval Office in January, he’ll quickly face one of the gravest challenges any president has seen in the modern era: Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be dead from Covid-19. Public trust in scientific and government institutions will be depleted. If the fall and winter goes as badly as some experts fear, coronavirus outbreaks may be at a new peak. And if a vaccine gets approved, it will still need to be distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans quickly and equitably.
Biden’s immediate job would be fixing the mess left behind by his predecessor — one that’s left America with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world and, as of September, more daily Covid-19 deaths than all but two developed countries.
Experts say these problems are fixable, but fixing them will largely come down to political will. The policy solutions are things that we’ve all heard about throughout the pandemic: aggressive testing and tracing to contain new outbreaks. Mask-wearing to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Economic support for those affected by the epidemic, at once providing financial support and making social distancing more feasible.
“It’s not rocket science. It’s not that we need some new thing that hasn’t been thought of before,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “There are things that have been done in some cases, or can be done. But if there was a stronger, coordinated federal role … that could really make a difference. It’s happened in other countries.”
Another part of Biden’s job will be to, in effect, repair Americans’ trust in science — bolstering public health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), widely considered the gold standard of public health agencies in the world before the pandemic.
Biden will also have to prepare the country for the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine that could take months if not years. The challenge here isn’t just discovering a safe and effective vaccine; many experts, in fact, are hopeful the world will do that by the end of 2020. The difficulty will be figuring out how to quickly produce and distribute up to hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine to the general public — an unprecedented effort. That will also require persuading the public to take the vaccine, which could be particularly challenging coming off the heels of a highly contentious presidential election.
Biden, for his part, has vowed to do much of this. His website promises to adopt a masking mandate and boost testing and tracing. His campaign has vowed to “listen to science” and “restore trust, transparency, common purpose, and accountability to our government.” And he’s promised to “plan for the effective, equitable distribution of treatments and vaccines.”
Trump could do all of this, too. But there’s very little faith among experts that Trump will change his current approach to the pandemic, especially if he wins reelection. Instead, he’ll likely continue doing what he’s done: deliberately downplaying the pandemic, demanding states reopen far too quickly, punting testing and tracing to local and state governments with more limited resources, mocking masking, and continuing to try to politicize the CDC and FDA.
That failed response helps explain the US’s current Covid-19 outbreak, leading the country to more than 200,000 deaths from the disease — by far the highest recorded death toll in the world. When controlling for population, the US hasn’t had the highest death rate for Covid-19, but it’s among the top 20 percent for developed nations, and has seven times the death rate as the median developed country. If the US had the same Covid-19 death rate as, say, Canada, more than 120,000 more Americans would likely be alive today.
That damage can’t be reversed. Those 200,000 deaths are on the US’s record forever. But Biden, at least, could take actions that would help prevent America’s outbreak from getting even worse.
1) Implement policies we know work: Testing, tracing, masks, and social distancing
There are problems in the world with really difficult or unknowable answers. That’s not as true for Covid-19: While there’s a lot about the coronavirus we’re still learning, there are many policy approaches that we know work and the US hasn’t really embraced. This is, then, more a matter of will than knowledge — which is something that Biden, especially if he has a sympathetic Democrat-controlled Congress, could address.
Testing is among those proven policy approaches. When paired with contact tracing, more testing can help public health officials detect outbreaks, get the infected to isolate and the infected’s close contacts to quarantine, and use broader public health measures as needed. This is an approach that has worked well in many other developed countries, from Germany to South Korea to New Zealand.
The US, however, has struggled to build up its testing capacity. It’s made big improvements since the start of the pandemic, but testing hasn’t increased above 1 million tests a day — far lower than experts say is needed, given the country’s large epidemic overall. As a result, the percentage of tests coming back positive, which experts use to measure testing capacity, stubbornly remains at 5 percent or more; it should be, experts suggest, far below 5 percent and preferably below even 3 percent. It can still take days to get test results back, and that can spike to weeks if demand, due to a new outbreak, is high.
According to experts, part of the problem is the US never fundamentally fixed supply line problems — with shortages popping up for swabs, reagents, testing kits, and other needed equipment throughout the pandemic. There was also an economic disincentive to building out capacity too much: If a lab, for example, massively scales up its coronavirus testing, but the pandemic is over in a few years, it will be left with a lot of infrastructure it doesn’t use or get revenue from, a huge money sink.
A Biden administration could address these problems, using the powers of the federal government to coordinate the supply line, maintain its stability, and guarantee that any businesses and organizations will be made whole for investments into coronavirus testing. To do all of that, the country needs a national plan — which it currently lacks.
There’s a chance the supply problem fixes itself. With the development and mass production of new antigen tests that don’t have to go through a lab and hospitals, Americans could get access to many more tests that also return results within minutes instead of hours or days. Compared to the hold-ups with the current PCR tests that go through labs or hospitals, it would be a welcome change.
Still, there would be remaining questions about how to deploy and distribute those new tests based on equity and need — questions that a national plan could address.
After that, the US would still face another problem: how to actually use those tests. That’s where contact tracing comes in, as “disease detectives” track down newly infected people and their close contacts to convince them to isolate and quarantine. Earlier this year, Crystal Watson, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, projected that the US would need at least 100,000 contact tracers. She estimated the US still has fewer than half of that number.
Since Watson’s original estimate, Covid-19 outbreaks in the US have also gotten much worse and more widespread. That presents two major problems: First, the US now needs even more contact tracers than she originally estimated. Second, it’s now likely impossible for contact tracing to really bring down the epidemic on its own, because there are just way too many cases for even a massive team of tracers to track down and contain.
So while a large federal investment in a contact tracing workforce and equipment could help, it probably won’t be enough. “We really have to take other measures to bring down transmission in order for contact tracing to be effective,” Watson told me.
Among the other measures: masks. The scientific evidence for masking has gotten much stronger since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with multiple studies linking the widespread use of masks and new mask mandates to drops in Covid-19 cases and deaths. One study in Health Affairs suggested that, with caveats that this is just an approximation, “230,000-450,000 COVID-19 cases may have been averted on the basis of when states passed these mandates.” If mandates were nationwide instead of left to a minority of states at the time, it stands to reason the impact would have been much bigger.
Whether the federal government could impose a mask mandate on its own gets into legally dicey territory. But a Biden administration and Congress could use financial incentives to encourage cities and states to adopt masking mandates and provide extra resources to enforce them. That could get the remaining 16 states without a mask mandate, or at least some of the municipalities in those states, to adopt the policy.
Just having a president who is unequivocal about the benefits of masking and consistently wears a mask in public, experts claimed, would also signal to the rest of the country that this is the right thing to do. It’s “just the public image of a responsible adult doing what they’re supposed to do,” Cedric Dark, an emergency medicine physician at the Baylor College of Medicine, told me.
Even with all these measures in place, the US will have to continue social distancing to some degree. No one wants this, but, depending on how bad fall and winter outbreaks get, some cities, counties, and states may have to bring back lockdowns.
The federal government can provide clearer guidance on how and when to do this. It can also, with Congress’s backing, pass legislation that financially supports people affected by lockdowns. A commonly cited idea is a bailout for bars, restaurants, and other businesses, which would not only help keep these employers and their employees afloat but make the negatives of closing down much more tolerable and, therefore, make closing down easier and more likely if it’s deemed necessary to fight the coronavirus.
Ultimately, this could benefit the economy by mitigating the need for such harsh social distancing efforts. A preliminary study from the 1918 flu pandemic found that cities that took more aggressive action against outbreaks back then emerged stronger economically. Germany and others have similarly seen their restaurant businesses recover by controlling the coronavirus. As Watson put it, “In order for our economy to recover, we really do need to resource our public health response more effectively.”
Again, none of this is really new. The experts I spoke with often joked that we were having the exact same conversations now that we had back in the spring and summer. But the US hasn’t fully committed to these kinds of policies — and a Biden administration could.
2) Rebuild trust in science and public health institutions
Under Trump, and particularly throughout this pandemic, trust in many institutions has dwindled. This has applied even to American institutions that were in the past considered the best of the best in the world for public health, such as the CDC and FDA.
The country needs “a long campaign to get people to trust science again,” Dark said. “My colleagues don’t trust anything coming out of the CDC now, due to how politicized it’s been.”
A report from the Covid-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, based on a 50-state survey on Covid-19, captured the trends: Across the country, trust in “doctors and hospitals,” “scientists and researchers,” and especially the CDC has fallen. Trust in all of these is still relatively high — much higher than trust in either Biden or Trump — but it’s a concerning trend. Among different political and demographic groups, trust can be even lower, too.
“Six months ago, the FDA and CDC were shorthands for gold-standard scientific advice,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told me. That’s changed, he lamented.
Some of this reflects genuine failures by these institutions. The CDC and FDA both played roles in the US’s testing problems — the CDC by botching its tests, and the FDA dragging its feet in approving more testing from private and independent labs — leading to what’s been widely called a “lost month” for testing in February. The CDC was also slow to recommend masks, then failed to admit to messing up and explain its about-face on the issue. The FDA, meanwhile, has acted in ways that seem politically motivated rather than based on rigorous evidence, such as when it allowed, before warning against, hydroxychloroquine, which was always unproven but Trump spoke favorably about.
Although the CDC and FDA are supposed to stand above partisan politics to help maintain their credibility, Trump and his administration have actively meddled in their affairs and work. Trump and his political cronies have, for example, repeatedly pushed the CDC to do things solely to support Trump’s unproven claims about Covid-19 — forcing the agency to briefly recommend less testing, loosen its guidelines for reopening, and delay studies that contradict the president. All of that has called into question just how independent the CDC truly is.
Fixing this will take time, but it’s fairly straightforward: Biden and the political actors in his administration should back off, allowing scientists to take a leading role in these agencies and the US’s Covid-19 response in general.
Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory University School of Medicine, put this simply: “Pay attention to science. Let the science guide the response, not the politics.”
That includes giving these institutions control of the public messaging. While Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the White House’s coronavirus task force, Biden could put a scientist or public health official in charge. While Trump sidelined the CDC after Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned in February that “disruption to everyday life might be severe” due to Covid-19, Biden could allow the agency and its experts to speak plainly and truthfully to the public.
That should also translate to the policy level. When the CDC makes recommendations, the Biden administration shouldn’t, as Trump has, undermine the guidelines or force the agency to change them. When scientists are recommending a pivot in the country’s approach, that should be seriously considered, even if it contradicts what the administration said or did in the past, while clearly and transparently explaining why a change is needed.
“The CDC has the expertise to lead us in this pandemic,” Jorge Salinas, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, told me. “We just need to ask them.”
The idea is to prove to the public time and time again that the country’s response to Covid-19 isn’t driven by politics but by science. It’s an admittedly difficult task for a country that’s consumed by politics and polarization at every level, but it’s something, experts said, that’s simply necessary to improve America’s response to the coronavirus.
3) Prepare the country for a months-long rollout of a vaccine
If we get a little lucky, there’s a chance that the world will finally have a proven, safe, and effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. It would be an incredible achievement — the fastest turnaround on a vaccine for a major disease in human history.
But that won’t be the end. After a vaccine makes it through the last rounds of research necessary to get FDA approval, it’ll have to be distributed to potentially more than 300 million people in the US alone. Given that some of these vaccines will require two doses, that means manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses of the medication — something that the country simply hasn’t done at the scale and speed that the pandemic demands.
There’s already a lot of work, from both governments and private actors like Bill Gates, to manufacture all those doses. It’s possible, even likely, that the current work isn’t enough — and that will demand more action and more funds by a Biden administration.
After that, there will be tough questions about who gets priority. There’s a consensus that first responders and health care workers, at least, should get a vaccine first. Beyond that, there are genuinely difficult questions: Should older adults get priority because they’re more vulnerable? Should essential workers? What about younger people, who seem to be behind the country’s most recent large outbreaks? “It gets complicated,” Jha acknowledged.
Another element will be persuading the public to actually take a vaccine. If a vaccine is 50 to 70 percent effective, as appears likely at first, experts argue that close to 100 percent of the population will need to take one to reach true herd immunity. That will be a tall order as the country deals not just with traditional, unscientific anti-vaxxer sentiments but also more nuanced concerns about whether the current politicized, fast process coronavirus vaccines are going through can really test adequately for safety. Different surveys have found a third to half of Americans don’t plan to or don’t know if they’ll get a coronavirus vaccine.
“It does seem like there has been less of a push to actually come up with a really good communications plan,” Watson said, “but also to just have a general dialogue with people as you go along about what the process has been like for creating a vaccine, what standards have been upheld, and the results of the safety and efficacy trials.”
Breaking through those concerns will require research and surveys to subsequently build a massive communications campaign that will try to push people to get vaccinated. This will be a huge undertaking, and it might not even work, depending on if a new administration can rebuild trust in science and depoliticize its public health institutions.
All of this could take a long time. Experts were unanimous in arguing that getting a vaccine by the end of 2020, should that happen, won’t be the end of the pandemic. They said that getting a vaccine out there could take at least months. Some spoke in terms of years, well into 2022 or 2023. “President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris, should they be in office, should understand they will be dealing with Covid for much of their first term,” Jha said. “It will continue to come up as an issue in the next midterms. It’s not going away.”
To put it another way: If Biden takes office, it’s possible a vaccine will finally present some kind of finish line in this pandemic. But we might quickly realize that the finish line is still a few months or years away. And that will make the work of preparing the country for a vaccine — and all the other steps needed to contain Covid-19 in the months and years ahead — necessary. With hundreds of thousands of Americans already dead, it’s the most important task Biden should prepare for right now.