Sara Fischer

Political groups on both sides of the aisle are throwing money and resources at propping up local, partisan websites that are often designed to appear as straight news. Some of these sites are leveraging Facebook advertising to boost their content.

President Trump's consistent attacks on free press and access to information, mostly through social media, have forced judges to re-evaluate the rules of political communications in the digital era. First Amendment advocates are waiting for a ruling that will end a two-year-long debate over whether President Donald Trump, and other public officials, can block constituents on social media. Shortly after Trump was elected, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed that tweets posted by President Trump using his @realDonaldTrump handle are considered presidential record

The shock factor around President Donald Trump's unplanned announcements, staff departures, taunting tweets and erratic behavior is wearing off, and media companies are scrambling to find their next big moneymaker.  Executives say that Trump fatigue is very real: Interest in political coverage overall is down, which is spurring investments in other beats, like technology and the global economy. Executives say they expect this week’s debate ratings to be nothing like the ratings for the 2016 Trump debates.

President Donald Trump has a penchant for ganging up on the "mainstream media," but lately his attacks have spread to ganging up on any information gatekeeper — from Big Tech platforms to newscasters on his favorite network. His ire lately has turned toward Sunday political shows, specifically. Last weekend he tweeted multiple times about the "Fake News Sunday Political Shows," even calling out Fox's own Chris Wallace for interviewing Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The Trump campaign is spending nearly half (44%) of its Facebook ad budget to target users who are over 65 years old, as opposed to Democratic candidates who are only spending 27% of their budget on that demographic. Other data points pulled from the Facebook ad archive show that the President is using most of those ads targeted towards older people to talk about immigration. Trump is using nativist language around immigrants in 54% of his ads, according to Bully Pulpit Interactive.

The world’s biggest tech companies are spending billions of dollars on projects to get more people around the world connected to the internet. Facebook is in talks to develop an underwater data cable ring around Africa.

Google is launching the Local Experiments Project, an effort to fund dozens of new local news websites around the country and eventually around the world. The tech giant says it will have no editorial control over the sites, which will be built by partners it selects with local news expertise. The first effort within the new Local Experiments Project will be ‘The Compass Experiment," which is a partnership between Google and McClatchy to launch three new, digital-only local news operations on multiple platforms. Google says the investments will be significant.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has reached a historic settlement with Facebook over advertising practices that allegedly discriminated against minorities. As part of five settlements totaling nearly $5 million, Facebook has agreed to make major changes to its ad platform that will help curb discrimination against certain people when it comes to employment, housing and credit ads. Facebook is creating a new advertising process, specifically for marketers that are purchasing ads around employment, housing and credit.

While Democrats' campaign launches have sucked up national attention, President Donald Trump's re-election campaign has quietly spent nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads. Political advertising strategists say that this level of ad spend on digital platforms this early in the campaign season is unprecedented. The data (captured between December 2018 and now) provides a window into the Trump campaign's 2020 strategy, which until now has been virtually invisible aside from a few rallies.

A global reckoning around the future of the internet is underway as autocratic regimes look to censor the internet in their countries, and races to develop new internet technologies, such as blockchain and 5G, heat up between the US and China. The next version of the internet could be split between countries that embrace an open web and isolationists that don't. It could also be fractured by different technologies that could fundamentally change the interconnected nature of the network and limit who can do business where.