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September 4, 2020 
By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles & AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco Good morning. 🍁 Summer's over. There are six days til the start of the NFL season. The Kansas City Chiefs are favored 6-to-1 to win the Super Bowl, assuming the season actually makes it that far.
• There are 60 days till the U.S. presidential election. Joe Biden leads the polls by about 7 points in the RealClearPolitics average, but that doesn't mean he'll win the White House.
• There's no telling how long till we have a coronavirus vaccine, but the White House's vaccine chief, countering the president, says it's "extremely unlikely" that we'll have one by Election Day.
📉 What's next: The markets, which yesterday suffered their worst fall since June, are bracing for another day of uncertainty with the August jobs report dropping at 8:30 a.m. ET.
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Bloomberg/Getty 🗳️ Moving the Market Silicon Valley's 'heated' season
When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook's new efforts to combat election misinformation this week, he told staff he was worried about "an increased risk of civil unrest," in which Facebook would be inundated with "intense claims and counter-claims" about the election results. "This could be a very heated period," he said.
• The heat will be felt most acutely in Silicon Valley, where Facebook, Twitter and Google will spend the next two months (and then some) trying to beat back lies, misinformation and voter suppression efforts — often from the president himself — while also trying not to tip the scales of the election or betray their commitments to open speech.
The big picture: Four years after failing to combat foreign threats in the 2016 presidential election, Silicon Valley's social media giants are girding for an even greater challenge in 2020: an unyielding attack on the legitimacy of the election from within America's own borders, and most notably from the nation's very own leader.
• What's at stake, possibly, is the integrity of the presidential election, the stability of the body politic and, for the social media firms, their reputations as responsible stewards of the democratic process.
• If, when the dust clears, the tech firms are seen to have aided rather than prevented efforts to undermine the election, the blowback will far surpass anything that they endured in the wake of 2016.
Many of Silicon Valley's critics have already concluded that Facebook, et al, are undermining the Democratic process by taking too lenient an approach to content moderation, fact-checking, even to applying their own policies on misinformation. But that criticism, while robust in media and political circles, has done almost nothing to affect the success and growth of the social media giants' businesses.
• The fall of 2020 could change that. The presidential election, and the heightened concerns over election security and voting, will shine klieg lights on Facebook, Twitter and Google, and the decisions they make every day to protect the nation's political integrity. If they fail, they will fail quite publicly — and quite memorably.
The latest: "Facebook, Google, Twitter and Reddit are holding regular meetings with one another, with federal law enforcement and with intelligence agencies to discuss potential threats to election integrity," Axios' Kyle Daly, Stef Kight and Sara Fischer report.
• Meanwhile, on Thursday, Twitter and Facebook placed warning labels on President Donald Trump's posts on mail-in voting, in which he encouraged voters to show up at polling places and vote in person if their mail-in ballots had yet to be counted, which is illegal.
• For Trump's supporters, the warning labels were the latest evidence of what they see as big tech's anti-conservative bias. For his opponents, they weren't nearly enough to offset the impact of the posts themselves. The social media firms' failure to please either side is a sign of the many challenges they face in the months ahead.
What's next: In a new column, NYT's Charlie Warzel declares Zuckerberg "the most powerful unelected man in America," and says Facebook "has woven itself into the fabric of democracy." His election initiatives are, in essence, "an admission of a great power that should make Americans uncomfortable."
• To date, Americans have actually been quite comfortable with Facebook's power, and Silicon Valley's generally. While many may bemoan their influence on politics (and society, and life) they nevertheless continue to enjoy their services quite frequently.
However: Should Facebook, Twitter and Google fail in 2020, should they be seen as having assisted the very forces they claim to be fighting, and should that failure tip the scales in favor of the candidate who actively tried to misinform and suppress the vote, then it's fair to assume that Americans will get quite uncomfortable with their power.
• In the event that happens, things will get quite heated in Silicon Valley, and stay that way.
Pool/Getty 🏛️ Big in the Beltway Bill Barr rushes a Google antitrust probe
"The Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month, after Attorney General William P. Barr overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case against one of the world’s wealthiest, most formidable technology companies," NYT's Katie Benner and Cecilia Kang scoop.
• "Justice Department officials told lawyers involved in the antitrust inquiry ... to wrap up their work by the end of September. ... Most of the 40-odd lawyers who had been working on the investigation opposed the deadline. Some said they would not sign the complaint, and several of them left the case this summer."
The big picture: "Lawyers ... expressed concerns that Mr. Barr wanted to announce the case in September to take credit for action against a powerful tech company under the Trump administration."
• "Some ... worry [his] determination to bring a complaint this month could weaken their case and ultimately strengthen Google’s hand."
🇺🇸 Talk of the Trail 🇺🇸
"Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and 'Suckers,'" by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg: "The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades."
Noah Berger/Getty 🌁 Big in the Bay Tim Cook delays iOS ad change
Tim Cook is delaying the rollout of a new Apple iOS update that would change how ads are targeted on iPhones and iPads, The Information’s Alex Heath reports. The update, which is intended to improve user privacy, will be delayed until next year.
• The big picture: The change, which will force developers to get permission from users to track ad campaigns on their devices, "has caused panic among marketers and developers that rely on targeted ads to reach consumers."
• Facebook has criticized the change, saying it would kill its multi-billion-dollar business that delivers ads in non-Facebook apps. It could have similar effects for Google.
What's next: "By delaying the change, Apple is giving developers more time to adjust to a world in which they can’t track users in as granular a way. ... Apple has a history of delaying specific policy changes, especially when they have ramifications for [developers]."
🏇 What's next: The long weekend.
• The NBA Playoffs continue on TNT, ESPN and ABC. The Kentucky Derby airs Saturday on NBC.
See you Tuesday.
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