Sara Fischer

Facebook will be updating the way news stories are ranked in its News Feed to prioritize original reporting and demoting stories that aren't transparent about who has written them. Facebook says that in order to identify which original stories to promote, it will use artificial intelligence to analyze groups of articles on a particular story topic and identify the ones most often cited as the original source. It's a minor but concrete tweak that Facebook can point to as doing something to minimize misinformation.

Social media companies are finally beginning to take action on posts from world leaders that violate their policies, after years of letting them mostly say whatever they wanted unfiltered to millions of people. Government officials are among the users most likely to abuse the wide reach and minimal regulation of tech platforms. Mounting pressure to stop harmful content from spreading amid the coronavirus pandemic, racial protests and a looming U.S.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is circulating a draft letter to be sent to the White House requesting additional relief targeted specifically at local newsrooms. The letter asks President Trump to:

Consumers are adopting stand-alone broadband services at a much higher rate than just two years ago, and analysts predict that the economic downturn prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak will accelerate the trend. With a recession looming, consumers may look to cut pay TV service in favor of more robust standalone internet packages once they're free to leave their homes. The broadband boom driven by the pandemic is likely to continue even after the virus dies down.

A slew of old-line industries that once hesitated to embrace digital technologies are now being forced to do so for the sake of survival. Once consumers get used to accessing services digitally — from older restaurants finally embracing online ordering, or newspapers finally going all-digital — these industries may find it hard to go back to traditional operations. Going virtual may open up new markets and new channels for engaging with consumers. But consumers will also likely rush to take part in out-of-home experiences once the pandemic eases and they can leave home again.

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that.

While satellite pay-TV services are in a death spiral, modern satellite-powered broadband services are raising big investments and a lot of high expectations. Historically, satellite communications services have been seen as a last-resort option for people in remote areas or, in pay-TV's case, for consumers who wanted a lot of channels. But as more and more cord cutters are relying on all-purpose broadband connections and get the bulk of their small-screen entertainment via streaming options, satellite TV companies Dish and DirecTV are languishing.

A years-long legal battle between Domino's Pizza and a man who is blind named Guillermo Robles over whether the pizza chain is required by law to make its website accessible to the disabled could make it all the way up to the Supreme Court in 2019. Should the case go that far, its outcome could forever change the way the internet is regulated — and determine how accessible the internet will be in the future for the roughly 20% of Americans with a disability. Domino's is petitioning the Supreme Court to take up the case after a federal appeals court sided with Robles in 2016.

Broadband technologies are getting better and faster — but access to them is still concentrated in metro areas and suburbs, leaving vast swaths of the country with marginal service or nothing at all. Benefits of the broadband advances are mostly going to consumers who already have plenty of options for robust internet connections.

Despite broad efforts to crack down on misinformation ahead of the 2020 election, the primary season so far has been chock full of deceptive messages and misleading information.  More sophisticated tactics that have emerged since 2016 threaten to derail the democratic process by further polluting online debate. And the seemingly unending influx of fakery could plant enough suspicion and cynicism to throw an otherwise legitimate election into question. "Far more people have gotten the idea that you can throw a U.S.