Information that is published or distributed in a digital form, including text, data, sound recordings, photographs and images, motion pictures, and software.
Digital Content
Request for Comments on Competition in the Mobile App Ecosystem
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is requesting comments on competition in the mobile application ecosystem.
Is Twitter biased against conservatives?
Social media companies are often accused of anti-conservative bias, particularly in terms of which users they suspend. Here, we evaluate this possibility empirically. We begin with a survey of 4,900 Americans, which showed strong bipartisan support for social media companies taking actions against online misinformation. We then investigated potential political bias in suspension patterns and identified a set of 9,000 politically engaged Twitter users, half Democratic and half Republican, in October 2020, and followed them through the six months after the U.S. 2020 election.
What Lies Beneath: The internet is decaying all around us
Early in my career in search engine optimization, I was working with an SEO consultant on a particular website project, who gave me some words of wisdom: A website is a building. A domain was brick and mortar, a sitemap was a hallway, webpages were a series of rooms. It was a compelling metaphor, one I kept returning to as I worked on optimizing and organizing the site’s pages. But the project became more complicated the longer I worked on it: Instead of finding a neatly ordered site structure, I found chaos. In the CMS were hundreds of broken links.
Time for a new digital regulatory authority
For platform companies, endorsing the concept of a new digital regulatory authority should be an act of enlightened self-interest. The idea that a handful of platforms can continue to make their own behavioral rules even when those decisions harm the public interest is no longer sustainable. The absence of a uniform federal policy is not only not in the interest of the public, but also it is creating problems for these companies. The ultimate uncertainty is a set of unknown decisions from multiple regulators.
Billionaires eye parallel media universe
Elon Musk doesn't seem to have much of a vision for how to actually run Twitter, if his takeover bid succeeds. He's not alone. A small group of tech moguls believe America is in the midst of what they call a "free speech" crisis, and they're investing time and money to change the terms of public discourse. But so far, they've made more headlines than progress.
Crimefighting in the metaverse
Crime might seem like a fake issue to the promoters of the metaverse — the kind of thing waved around by skeptics who “don’t get it.” But consumers are already thinking about it, and so is the industry.
A Peek into the Political Biases in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms During US Election 2020
Email services use spam filtering algorithms (SFAs) to filter emails that are unwanted by the user. However, at times, the emails perceived by an SFA as unwanted may be important to the user. Such incorrect decisions can have significant implications if SFAs treat emails of user interest as spam on a large scale. This is particularly important during national elections.
Remarks from Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Digital Assets
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen delivered remarks on digital assets policy, innovation, and regulation at American University's (DC) Kogod School of Business Center for Innovation. "A few weeks ago, President Biden signed an Executive Order calling for a coordinated and comprehensive government approach to digital asset policy," Yellen said. "Digital assets have grown explosively, reaching a market cap of $3 trillion last November from $14 billion just five years prior.
Toward new guardrails for the information society
Increasing interdependencies and deepening uncertainty change how the information society can be governed sustainably. In response, policy approaches worldwide are being reconsidered and new approaches developed that are more appropriate to these conditions. This research explores the conditions under which policies that worked in the past remain appropriate and when they will likely fail. It explores the role of dynamic analytical frames and a reconsideration of the normative principles of information society policies in overcoming these weaknesses.