Verge, The

A new report says Facebook shelved an update that would have suppressed fake news from going viral on the social network. High-ranking Facebook executives were briefed on an update that identified fake news and hoaxes, but the tool was never released in fears of “upsetting conservatives.” The tool, which heavily affected right-wing media, was reportedly killed following revelations that the company’s human-curated Trending Topics team often favored liberal topics. Facebook then fired the team in place of an algorithm, which instead regularly surfaced fake news onto Trending Topics. It also updated the news feed to favor stories about friends and family over clickbait headlines and spam.

Still, Zuckerberg maintains that “99 percent of what people see [on Facebook] is authentic.” The CEO claimed that fake news worked both ways — with inaccurate stories shared on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — though a report earlier in 2016 cites that right-wing media published misleading information 38 percent of the time compared to left-wing media’s 20 percent.

AT&T announced a new feature for its data plans called Stream Saver that will effectively throttle mobile video streams starting sometime in 2017. Touted as a “free and convenient, data-saving feature,” AT&T will cap what it says are most video streams to 480p by default. To watch video in high definition, consumers will have to opt-out using the myAT&T app or on the company’s website. AT&T says there is no charge to use the feature.

It sounds innocuous right now, and in most cases having a data-saving tool you can toggle on and off at will is a good thing. (AT&T killed overage fees in August, so it no longer has a vested interest in letting customers exceed their limit.) Yet Stream Saver could pave the way for AT&T to start enabling the potentially net neutrality-violating exemption features championed by T-Mobile and its Music Freedom and Binge On initiatives.

People who are well liked on Facebook may also be healthier, according to a study that linked people’s activity on the social network to their lifespans. This could be another blow against the increasingly unstable position that digital media is inherently dangerous. The study looked at the association between the Facebook use of 12 million people between the ages of 27 and 71 and their longevity, using records from the California Department of Public Health. Led by William Hobbs — who at the time was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego — the researchers found that Facebook activity that indicated a rich offline social life tracked with improved longevity. They published their results Oct 31 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Specifically, they found that people who received a lot of friend requests tended to live longer, but there was little association between longevity and sending friend requests. Posting photos was also linked with reduced mortality in the study. And moderate levels of online-only behavior like sending messages also appears to track with a longer life. The study supports previous research that associated a robust, real-world social network with improved health. The study, however, covered just one state and one social network. And it looked at correlation, not causation. “We cannot say that spurring users to post more photos on Facebook will increase user longevity,” the authors write in the paper. In fact, it’s just as likely that the association goes the reverse direction: these findings could mean that healthier people have the energy and time for richer offline social lives that bleed into their online lives.

While the Trump campaign continues to flounder weeks before Election Day, a new report is providing some inside information on the candidate's strategy, including an unorthodox use of Facebook. Businessweek explains how the Trump team has quietly organized a data enterprise to sharpen its White House bid. The campaign is meanwhile attempting to depress votes in demographics where Hillary Clinton is winning by wide margins. In one move, the Trump campaign reportedly created a cartoon animation with Clinton repeating her now-infamous line about "super predators," pairing it with the text, "Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators."

Businessweek reports that the Trump campaign is planning to use the ad in so-called "dark" Facebook posts — targeted, paid posts — to convince black voters not to come out for Election Day. Certainly there's nothing new about political ads trashing an opponent — but using Facebook to target the opposition's supporters is a different strategy. As Businessweek points out, there's no widely available evidence that such a plan will work. It may even backfire, unintentionally convincing some Americans to vote instead. But, the data the Trump campaign has built may be the foundation for a Trump project launching well past Election Day.

This weekend saw one of the biggest corporate acquisitions in years as AT&T reached a deal to purchase Time Warner for more than $80 billion. If approved, the deal would create a massive new joining of the telecom and media business, along the lines of AOL-Verizon (combined in May of 2015 ) and Comcast-NBCUniversal.

But AT&T's new conglomerate has a unique combination. Comcast has a bundle of cable channels and a fiber network — a scary combination for many — but it doesn't have a wireless business (at least not yet). Verizon has a wireless business and a web empire, but it doesn't have any TV channels. The newly formed AT&T conglomerate would be the only company with the means to build a direct pipeline from Game of Thrones to your smartphone — which could be a powerful and frightening force in the years to come. If the future of the media business is mobile video, zero-rating could give carriers frightening new powers — and no one would benefit more than the newly joined AT&T-Time Warner conglomerate. For now, content companies are holding most of the cards — but that only means AT&T’s new powers are more likely to appear as a bonus rather than a restriction.

Cities across the country are clamoring for technological upgrades to transform themselves from cities of the past into “smart cities” of the future. Sidewalk Labs says it will help over a dozen cities do just that. Sidewalk Labs will join forces with national advocacy group Transportation For America (T4A) to help 16 cities better prepare themselves for innovations like self-driving cars and ride-sharing apps, as well as share information with each other to find out what works and what doesn’t.

The 16 cities that were selected are: Austin, TX; Denver, CO; Boston, MA; Centennial, CO; Chattanooga, TN; Lone Tree, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Miami-Dade County, FL; Madison, WI; Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN; Nashville, TN; Portland, OR; Sacramento, CA; San Jose, CA; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC.

Verizon has a new unlimited mobile data offering with some significant strings attached. PopData is essentially a pay-as-you-go unlimited option that costs $2 for every 30 minutes or $3 for every 60 minutes. Think of it like a microtransaction or in-app purchase in a mobile game, where you can’t enjoy the full benefits of a product you ostensibly already own or pay for without ponying up a few extra bucks. Of course, PopData isn’t quite as insidious as it sounds upfront.

There does appear to be some legitimate reasons to want unfettered data access for a short amount of time. For instance, perhaps you know you’ll be downloading large files to your phone like numerous Spotify playlists, or maybe you want to enjoy an uninterrupted stream of a sports game or Netflix movie without having to worry about your data cap. But there’s no telling really whether this is a good or bad deal, as it complicates how we think of the value of data by blending a monthly bucket metaphor with that of a time-based subscription system. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if customers could simply pay for unlimited data every month. Yet Verizon — unlike AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint — does not offer customers a standard unlimited plan, and the company has made an effort to kick users off their grandfathered plans in the past.

Google and Facebook are working together to lay a nearly 8,000-mile cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

The fiber-optic cable will have a bandwidth of 120 terabits per second, which Google says makes it the highest-capacity route between the US and Asia. It’ll double the current record, which is held by a cable that Google is also a partner on. The new cable should allow Google and Facebook to offer faster and more reliable service to visitors on the other side of the Pacific. The companies will likely each get a certain chunk of the cable’s total capacity and lease out the remaining space to others; but so far, they haven’t announced the specifics.

Comcast's home internet data caps are going live for a majority of customers starting November 1st.

Called the "Xfinity Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan," the cap restricts the amount of data you consume in your home to 1TB per month regardless of the speed of your plan. Comcast claims 99 percent of customers use less than 1TB per month, but it does now offer an unlimited option for $50 more per month. Comcast says it will never throttle customers who go over the cap, but it will automatically add 50GB to your plan at a cost of $10. The company will continue to charge you $10 in 50GB intervals up to $200 a month. To notify customers, the company will use in-browser, email, and text notifications starting at the 50 percent point, and a usage meter is available on your online account. Comcast says customers will get two grace months every year, meaning you won't be charged unless you exceed the cap a third time in any given 12-month period.

For the next presidential debate, you'll be able to vote online for questions that could be asked of the candidates. The debate's organizers announced that they're working with the Open Debate Coalition to source questions online through the new site presidentialopenquestions.com. At the site, people can submit and vote on questions for the candidates. The top 30 questions will be eligible for consideration — although there's no guarantee that even a single question from the website will make it on air. This is the first time the Commission on Presidential Debates has considered questions submitted by online voting, and it seems to be viewing it more as an experiment than a true part of the second debate. The next presidential debate, on October 9th, will use a town hall format, with half its questions coming from "citizen participants" and half from the moderators.