Digital Content

Klout, the service which measured online influence and assigned people a zero-to-100 score based on their social media followings, will shut down on May 25. Everyone’s Klout scores will go away, and with them, any remaining chance that businesses will treat us better or worse based on those scores. But the data Klout gathered from people presumably lives on. Lithium Technologies, the social-media marketing company that bought Klout in 2014, implied in its announcement that it has integrated Klout’s software and data into its own products. 

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee made public for the first time the full cache of more than 3,000 ads that Facebook said were purchased by a pro-Kremlin group, the Internet Research Agency. The ads, fewer than 50 of which had previously been revealed, offer the clearest window yet into the evolving tactics used by the group as it sought to amplify social and political tensions in the US. The Russian-backed pages initially deployed relatively simple techniques, buying ads targeted to reach large segments, such as all Facebook users living in the US.

Facebook is defining what it considers "issue ads" through an initial list of ad topics, ranging from abortion to guns, that will require authorization and labeling on its platform in the US. Facebook's initial list of what it considers an "issue ad": Abortion, budget, civil rights, crime, economy, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, government reform, guns, health, immigration, infrastructure, military, poverty, social security, taxes, terrorism, and values. A list of topics is a good start, but there will inevitably be instances where there are discrepancies a

Social media platforms are using the same techniques as gambling firms to create psychological dependencies and ingrain their products in the lives of their users, experts warn. These methods are so effective they can activate similar mechanisms as cocaine in the brain, create psychological cravings and even invoke “phantom calls and notifications” where users sense the buzz of a smartphone, even when it isn’t really there.

First Lady Melania Trump said she would focus her official effort as first lady on teaching children to put kindness first in their lives, particularly on social media. She unveiled a program called “Be Best,” which she said would tackle opioid abuse, social media pressures and mental health issues among young people.

The Santa Clara Principles offer guidance to internet platforms on how to provide users with meaningful due process when their posts are taken down or their accounts are suspended, and to help ensure that the enforcement of company content guidelines is fair, unbiased, and respectful of users’ free expression rights. The three principles urge companies to:

• Publish the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended due to violations of their content guidelines;

Google is removing anonymized and encrypted user IDs from DoubleClick data transfer starting May 25, to align its data practices with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The changes apply to all companies using the DoubleClick ID feature. The data remains accessible to advertisers, but the move makes Google the gatekeeper of the data to prevent data sharing and requires advertisers to use its platforms and tools.

Facebook’s failure to compel Cambridge Analytica to delete all traces of data from its servers – including any “derivatives” – enabled the company to retain predictive models derived from millions of social media profiles throughout the US presidential election, the Guardian can reveal. Leaked emails reveal that when Cambridge Analytica told Facebook almost a year before the election that it had deleted data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users, it stopped short of agreeing to also erase derivatives of the data.

AT&T has been blocking the new Cloudflare DNS service, but AT&T says the blocking was unintentional and that it will fix the problem soon. The blocking is affecting AT&T home Internet customers who use an AT&T gateway. "With the recent launch of Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service, we have discovered an unintentional gateway IP address conflict with 1 of their 4 useable IPs and are working to resolve the issue," said AT&T. Most of AT&T's customers should be able to access Cloudflare DNS using the alternate 1.0.0.1 address.

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission commissioners expressing concern that Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree with the Commission.