The Twitter filter

• "When a voter is exposed to any information related to the presidential contest, chances are it's been through the Twitter filter first," the Associated Press suggests in the latest story about how Twitter is influencing the election.

"Grassroots" ads?

• The AFL-CIO's Super PAC says it will begin running online ads critical of Mitt Romney.

• Commenting on the Obama and Romney advertising strategies, Thomas Edsall writes in a New York Times blog post:

  In one eight day period from April 25 to May 2, the Obama campaign released six anti-Romney web ads and one negative television ad, going after Romney on issues ranging from women's contraception to his Swiss bank account. Web ads, however, are only of marginal value. They reach relatively few voters and unless they somehow capture the public imagination and go viral, most of the people who see them are already Obama loyalists. Obama's sole television ad during this period attacked Romney for shipping jobs overseas. The ad clearly identifies the Obama-Biden campaign as the sponsor and begins with Obama himself saying "I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message." In other words, the benefits of the Obama commercial are counteracted by the fact that voters who dislike negative ads will know Obama is sponsoring this one.

• Rick Santorum endorsed Mitt Romney in an e-mail to supporters last night.

Around the web

• The Senate confirmed two Administration nominees to the Federal Communications Commission.

• ICYMI: As Facebook prepares for its IPO, it has also been focused on Washington D.C. lobbying, Politico reported. Its PAC slightly favored Republicans in donations, and also focused on Judiciary committees, the Hill had reported earlier. .

• Mayors from 50 cities are asking that Village Voice Media require people posting escort ads on Backpage.com to show identification.

• Several blogs yesterday noted that the popularity of so-called social readers used by many news sites on Facebook seems to be steadily decreasing.

• If it wasn't shared with you already: "I'm an Article About the Internet That You Repost on the Internet," from the New Yorker.

• A jury found that Google had breached Java's copyright in a lawsuit brought by Oracle, but could not agree whether Google's actions should count as fair use, per the BBC.

• Massachusetts has started a new online system for employers to run criminal background checks, though the registry is limited to 10 years.

• The Milwaukee Police Department has launched a news site called The Source to give its perspective on its work and news stories on police activities.

• The Associated Press profiled a project called Creative Currency in San Francisco, which explores ways that technological solutions could help city residents who are homeless or living in poverty.

• A Montreal newspaper has apologized for a reporter's tweets that criticized the bodies of some male students participating in a "nearly naked" protest.

• The National Library of Medicine is offering a new digital collection of films about the battle against tropical diseases produced between 1927 and 2007.

• Political scientist Ron Patz blogged about difficulties in getting access to EU Commission documents.

• ICYMI: Ahead of this past weekend's elections, The Next Web profiled how Electionista monitors the political Twittersphere across 110 different countries in 58 languages.

• In Italian local elections, the 5 Star Movement, which, according to Reuters, organizes itself on social networks, won 21 percent of the vote in Parma and 15 percent of the vote in Genoa.

• The petition committee of the German Parliament held a hearing on ACTA yesterday, which came about after 61,000 had signed an online We The People-type petition requesting that the treaty be addressed by the parliament, Der Spiegel's German edition reported. A government official with the Justice Ministry said during the proceedings that the Justice Ministry expects that ACTA will fail in the European Parliament.

• The German Pirate Party elected to the state parliament of Schleswig-Holstein said it would tolerate a government of Social Democrats, Greens and the Danish minority party SSW.

  Pirate Party members told techPresident contributing writer David Meyer that they wanted to gain experience in parliament before seeking to become part of government. Don't miss Meyer's deep dive into how the Pirate Party apparatus works: Collaborative, horizontally organized, and leaning on technology tools to bring as wide a group of participants into conversations as possible.

• The British Protection of Freedoms Act, set to be enacted soon, will oblige public offices to provide requested information in electronic format, if that is the form in which it is held, and also oblige them to make datasets publicly available for re-use under a fee.

• The British government is planning consultations with Internet service providers over a proposal under which they would have to block pornography by default.

• A journalist from the Guardian live-tweeted his arrest while covering protests in Russia over the inauguration of Vladimir Putin as president.

• As Syria held parliamentary elections that were dismissed by activists, YouTube videos showed activists mocking polling places.

• A Bahraini human rights activist has been arrested on charges of using social networks to call for protests.

• The New York Times reports on ongoing struggles over web and press freedom in the Palestinian Territories.