August 2019

Apparently, to satisfy regulators, YouTube officials are finalizing plans to end “targeted” advertisements on videos kids are likely to watch. The move could immediately dent ad sales for the video giant -- though not nearly as much as other proposals on the table. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether YouTube breached the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA). The agency reached a settlement with YouTube, but has not released the terms. It is not clear if YouTube’s changes to ad targeting are a result of the settlement. The plans could still change, apparently.

The Department of Justice is forging ahead with its review of online platforms for potential antitrust violations, coordinating with state attorneys general while signaling it could send demands for documents to Silicon Valley companies and their critics, said DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim. Assistant Attorney General Delrahim also waded into a simmering Washington debate over what legal protections should be afforded to Facebook, Google and Twitter for the user-generated content that appears on their platforms, raising the possibility that Congress could re-examine the law.

President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on and threats aimed at the press. On Aug 18, President tweeted criticisms of The New York Times and the state of journalism in general: "The Failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting  from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt....'Journalism' has reached a new low in the history of our Country.

A new 20-week Media Matters study on Facebook pages that regularly post about American political news again found that right-leaning pages and left-leaning pages have nearly identical engagement rates, while right-leaning pages on average earned more weekly interactions than left-leaning pages. Some findings: