Platforms

Since the time of the early advertising-supported newspapers, economic incentive has worked to bring people together around a common set of shared information. Maximizing ad revenue meant offending as few readers as possible by at least attempting a balanced presentation of the facts. The search for balance began to retreat with the arrival of cable television, but the economic model of maximizing revenue by maximizing reach still governed. The targeting capability of social media algorithms, however, has extinguished the traditional economic model.

Thousands of local newspapers have closed in recent years. Their disappearance has left millions of Americans without a vital source of local news and deprived communities of an institution essential for exposing wrongdoing and encouraging civic engagement.

Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s top antitrust enforcer, warned tech giants that amassing vast quantities of consumers’ data could create competition concerns in the eyes of federal regulators, marking the US government’s latest shot across the bow at Silicon Valley.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South bend), who has been a Silicon Valley favorite in the 2020 presidential race, is calling out several tech giants for harming workers. In his new policy plan, Mayor Buttigieg singles out Facebook, Google and Uber for troubling labor practices, and pledges to hold employers accountable under labor laws, strengthen unions and expand protections for gig workers. “The status quo with companies like Facebook and Uber setting the rules and government sitting on the sidelines must change,” the plan says.

Facebook is considering restricting politicians' ability to use highly detailed demographic and personal information to narrowly target would-be voters with ads, policy chief Nick Clegg confirmed in a possible shift in the social network's broadly permissive policy on political advertising. Clegg declined to discuss any other changes, saying the company is still in the decision-making process.

An international "grand committee" of lawmakers called for a pause on online micro-targeted political ads with false or misleading information until the area is regulated. The committee, formed to investigate disinformation, gathered in Dublin to hear evidence from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other experts about online harms, hate speech and electoral interference. The meeting was attended by lawmakers from Australia, Finland, Estonia, Georgia, Singapore, the UK and United States.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg oversaw plans to consolidate the social network's power and control competitors by treating its users' data as a bargaining chip. Zuckerberg, along with his board and management team, found ways to tap Facebook users' data — including information about friends, relationships and photos — as leverage over the companies it partnered with.

New court documents give the first look into the state of CA’s 18-month-long investigation into Facebook’s privacy dealings. In those documents, CA State Attorney General Xavier Becerra says Facebook has failed to comply with its subpoenas for more information in the state’s ongoing privacy investigation. It represents the first time the state has acknowledged the probe into Facebook, as investigators don’t disclose active probes, “unless there’s a legal action that makes it public,” Becerra said.  “This is one of those times,” Becerra said.

Facebook acknowledged another privacy mishap: some app developers may have wrongly accessed names and profile photos of users in certain groups. Roughly 100 “partners” may have accessed this information — including 11 that had done so within the past 60 days. Otherwise, Facebook declined to offer specifics, including who exactly might have seen the data and how many users had been affected. The trouble appears to stem from a functionality in Facebook’s groups service.