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August 2016

Most Americans streamed the Olympics from PCs, not mobile devices. Here’s why.

With the 2016 Summer Olympics now a memory, it's time to look back at how Americans took in all that sports coverage. How we watched the Rio games can tell us a lot about the current state of media and technology and give us insights on trends in mobile device adoption and cord-cutting. Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, accounted for almost 20 percent of the Aug 10 Olympics stream. An additional 17 percent went to set-top boxes, such as Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. Of these, Roku boxes were the overwhelming favorite among Olympics viewers, eating up a 10 percent share. In the end, however, PCs took the prize, accounting for more than 60 percent of that night's consumption.

IPhones, Android devices and iPads account for almost one-third of general Internet consumption, a large discrepancy from the Olympic numbers. Analysts say this discrepancy highlights the particular way in which Americans could access their Olympics coverage online. To watch the Internet live stream, viewers needed to log in through their cable subscription. The downside to this meant being chained to a cable provider, but the upside was that once you authenticated you could watch from any device — mobile or otherwise. Add to that the dismal reviews of NBC's mobile streaming app and you have a powerful incentive to watch from a laptop. Although much of our media consumption is increasingly shifting toward mobile devices, live-stream events such as the Olympics may be one area where PCs could remain dominant for some time.

August 24, 2016 (How Does Facebook Label You?)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2016


INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Three FCC Rural Broadband Experiment Awardees Rejected Over Letters of Credit
   What New York's free Wi-Fi kiosks mean to the city's homeless
   Comcast’s $70 gigabit deal is shockingly difficult to sign up for [links to Benton summary]
   Multifamily Home Values Increase Due to Fiber Broadband Connections [links to Fiber To The Home Council infographic]
   US trade officials side with Cisco, uphold import ban on rival [links to Hill, The]
   California Gigabit Footprint Grows with Consolidated Expansion [links to telecompetitor]

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   Mobile Network Performance in the US - RootMetric report
   MIT scientists think they can make your WiFi 10x faster [links to CNNMoney]

ELECTIONS 2016
   Where political ad spending is booming: Social and search [links to Media life]
   Op-ed: Media outlets tend to cover the surveys with the most “newsworthy” results, which can distort the picture of where the race stands [links to Washington Post]
   Trump TV is a GOP nightmare [links to Washington Post]
   Silicon Valley throws big money at Clinton and virtually nothing at Trump [links to CNNMoney]
   CNN Outlines The “Shocking Allegations” In Andrea Tantaros’ Lawsuit Against Trump Advisor Roger Ailes And Former Employer Fox News [links to Media Matters for America]
   Seth Meyers Mocks “Pivot” Talk As Trump Embraces "Some Of The Most Controversial Figures In Conservative Media" [links to Media Matters for America]
   Jill Stein: In praise of WikiLeaks [links to Hill, The]
   Mark Jamison: Tech for president! [links to American Enterprise Institute]
   Holman Jenkins: Trump Wins Even If He Loses. He wants the presidency but the free media exposure will pay off regardless. [links to Wall Street Journal]

JOURNALISM
   Fox Host Admits They Didn't Cover Louisiana Floods Until It Became Political [links to Media Matters for America]

SECURITY/PRIVACY
   Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You
   Activists call for Facebook 'censorship' change after Korryn Gaines death
   New York Police Broke Surveillance Rules After 9/11, Inquiry Finds [links to New York Times]
   FBI investigating Russian hack of New York Times reporters, others [links to CNN]
   Why the Internet of Things Needs Different Encryption [links to nextgov]
   Google lays out plans to update Android more regularly and frequently [links to Ars Technica]

LABOR
   Gig economy poses tough questions for US

OWNERSHIP
   Comcast Completes DreamWorks Animation Purchase [links to Multichannel News]

ADVERTISING
   Google will punish sites that use annoying pop-up ads [links to Verge, The]

CONTENT
   How Website Blocking Is Curbing Digital Piracy Without “Breaking the Internet” - ITIF analysis [links to Benton summary]
   NBC Argues Millennials Did Watch the Olympics—Just Not All on Traditional TV [links to Wall Street Journal]

EDUCATION
   Classroom technologies narrow education gap in developing countries [links to Brookings]

DIVERSITY
   Melinda Gates: Computers Are For Girls, Too [links to Huffington Post]

COMPANY NEWS
   Disney and Vice, a Storybook Romance [links to Wall Street Journal]
   Project Loon is getting a new leader with practical industry experience [links to Bloomberg]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   Google decision in Russian antitrust case could ripple across globe: Any concessions made in Moscow risk setting a benchmark for antitrust enforcers in the US, South Korea, and the EU [links to Politico]

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INTERNET/BROADBAND

FCC DENIES PROJECTS OVER LETTERS OF CREDIT
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
An Federal Communications Commission order denies petitions from three entities that were provisionally awarded funding in the FCC Rural Broadband Experiment program because the awardees were unable to obtain satisfactory letters of credit — a decision that does not bode well for other provisional awardees that have experienced difficulties obtaining letters of credit meeting the FCC’s strict requirements. The Rural Broadband Experiments program had a one-time budget of $100 million to cover some of the costs of bringing broadband to rural areas where broadband is not available today or is available only at low speeds. The program was crafted to gain information to help the FCC establish rules for the Connect America Fund reverse auction, which will award a considerably larger amount of funding to help cover the cost of bringing broadband to more unserved areas.
benton.org/headlines/three-fcc-rural-broadband-experiment-awardees-rejected-over-letters-credit | telecompetitor
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WI-FI AND THE HOMELESS IN NYC
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Karen Matthews]
An effort to replace obsolete pay phones with Wi-Fi kiosks that offer free web surfing and phone calls has been a hit with panhandlers and the homeless, the least wired people in the city. The city doesn't track who's using the new LinkNYC terminals, but anecdotal evidence suggests many users are living on the streets.
benton.org/headlines/what-new-yorks-free-wi-fi-kiosks-mean-citys-homeless | Associated Press
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

MOBILE NETWORK PERFORMANCE IN THE US
[SOURCE: RootMetrics, AUTHOR: Dave Anderson]
The first half of 2016 marked another period of large-scale change to the US mobile landscape for both carriers and consumers alike. To give you an up-to-date and comprehensive look at how the networks performed in the face of this dynamic mobile landscape, our testing looked at performance across the breadth of the United States itself, in each of the 50 states, and within the 125 most populous metro areas across the country. Our latest data shows important changes to the mobile race as the carriers have continued to add capacity, expand their LTE footprints, and launch new technologies to improve your mobile experience. AT&T remains a strong number-two performer behind Verizon at the national level. AT&T finished second to Verizon in five out of six categories at the national level, including the holistic areas of overall performance, network reliability, network speed, and data performance. The only area in which AT&T didn’t rank second behind Verizon was in the Call RootScore category; Sprint again narrowly edged past AT&T to finish second.
benton.org/headlines/mobile-network-performance-us | RootMetrics
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PRIVACY/SECURITY

SEE HOW FACEBOOK LABELS YOU
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jeremy Merrill]
You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site. And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between. Facebook makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might categorize you as a liberal. Even if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.
benton.org/headlines/liberal-moderate-or-conservative-see-how-facebook-labels-you | New York Times
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FACEBOOK AND THE POLICE
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Sam Thielman]
A consortium of activist groups has sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to implement an “anti-censorship policy” at Facebook in its dealings with law enforcement officials in the wake of the death of Baltimore woman Korryn Gaines. Gaines, killed just after her Facebook Live video stream of her confrontation with police officers was turned off, was being served an arrest warrant after failing to appear in court for a traffic violation. She was shot dead by police and her five-year-old son, whom she was holding at the time, was wounded. The archived video from the stream was briefly unavailable as well, in what Facebook called “a technical glitch”. Police officers said they had asked Facebook to turn off Gaines’s video stream. The signatories of the letter say they don’t buy the “glitch” story. “If your company agrees to censor people’s accounts at the request of police – thereby allowing the police to control what the public sees on Facebook – then it is part of the problem,” they wrote. Among the organizations represented in the letter are Color of Change, a political advocacy group that focuses on the rights of African Americans, Demand Progress, MoveOn.org, and Free Press.
benton.org/headlines/activists-call-facebook-censorship-change-after-korryn-gaines-death | Guardian, The
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LABOR

GIG ECONOMY WORKERS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Barney Jopson]
The proliferation of on-demand workers is creating difficult questions for policymakers about how to respond to the changing nature of labour and the safety and welfare issues that it raises. Most “gig economy” workers, are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, according to rules introduced before the second world war. The rules, however, look increasingly outdated. According to company estimates, some 1m Americans work in the gig economy — also known as the on-demand or sharing economy — among them footloose millennials, professionals who lost their jobs mid-career and cash-strapped baby boomers forced to postpone retirement. A growing number want to see an overhaul of existing regulatory structures, which often prevent them from receiving two sought-after forms of support: safety net benefits, such as pensions, and training.
benton.org/headlines/gig-economy-poses-tough-questions-us | Financial Times
Share: Twitter | Facebook
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Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site. And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between. Facebook makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might categorize you as a liberal. Even if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.

Activists call for Facebook 'censorship' change after Korryn Gaines death

A consortium of activist groups has sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to implement an “anti-censorship policy” at Facebook in its dealings with law enforcement officials in the wake of the death of Baltimore woman Korryn Gaines. Gaines, killed just after her Facebook Live video stream of her confrontation with police officers was turned off, was being served an arrest warrant after failing to appear in court for a traffic violation.

She was shot dead by police and her five-year-old son, whom she was holding at the time, was wounded. The archived video from the stream was briefly unavailable as well, in what Facebook called “a technical glitch”. Police officers said they had asked Facebook to turn off Gaines’s video stream. The signatories of the letter say they don’t buy the “glitch” story. “If your company agrees to censor people’s accounts at the request of police – thereby allowing the police to control what the public sees on Facebook – then it is part of the problem,” they wrote.

Among the organizations represented in the letter are Color of Change, a political advocacy group that focuses on the rights of African Americans, Demand Progress, MoveOn.org, and Free Press.

Gig economy poses tough questions for US

The proliferation of on-demand workers is creating difficult questions for policymakers about how to respond to the changing nature of labour and the safety and welfare issues that it raises.

Most “gig economy” workers, are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, according to rules introduced before the second world war. The rules, however, look increasingly outdated. According to company estimates, some 1m Americans work in the gig economy — also known as the on-demand or sharing economy — among them footloose millennials, professionals who lost their jobs mid-career and cash-strapped baby boomers forced to postpone retirement. A growing number want to see an overhaul of existing regulatory structures, which often prevent them from receiving two sought-after forms of support: safety net benefits, such as pensions, and training.

What New York's free Wi-Fi kiosks mean to the city's homeless

An effort to replace obsolete pay phones with Wi-Fi kiosks that offer free web surfing and phone calls has been a hit with panhandlers and the homeless, the least wired people in the city. The city doesn't track who's using the new LinkNYC terminals, but anecdotal evidence suggests many users are living on the streets.

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