Axios
U.S. to spend $1.5 billion to jumpstart alternatives to Huawei
The federal government plans to invest $1.5 billion to help spur a standards-based alternative for the gear at the heart of modern cellular networks.
The alternative-media industrial complex
Elon Musk is the latest patron for an alternative-media ecosystem — right-leaning but not conventionally Republican — that has emerged in the last two years. Feeding on resentment against mainstream media, new media players have established a power base via Substack newsletters, podcasts and other independent channels. Writers Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald are getting new attention with Musk's ownership of Twitter. And they're reigniting long-simmering debates about what constitutes journalism in the internet era.
The fight against China's protest censorship (Axios)
Submitted by benton on Wed, 11/30/2022 - 09:48Good night, Alexa: Voice assistants face deep cuts
A decade after voice assistant technology captured the world's imagination, Alexa and Siri appear to be on the wane. Alexa's rise and fall show that for every winner in the tech industry's neverending game of "dominate the next platform," there are multiple money-incinerating losers.
Human rights, LGBTQ+ organizations oppose Kids Online Safety Act (Axios)
Submitted by Grace Tepper on Mon, 11/28/2022 - 16:39Global legal perils beset a downsized Twitter
Twitter faces a mass of forces abroad and in Washington that aim to compel the company to obey privacy rules, speech limits and other regulations as Elon Musk remakes the service. Musk's word is law inside Twitter now, but his disdain for rules will encounter tough pushback from governments around the world — just as the company has lost most of the people who managed its relationships with regulators and legislators. Twitter's biggest challenges lie abroad, particularly in Europe, which has been steadily tightening tech regulations for years.
Why misinformation didn't wreck the midterms
Many election deniers on the ballot, particularly for the crucial secretary-of-state roles, lost their races. This is because platforms, governments, and the media took countermeasures that were at least partially effective, based on their lessons from 2016, 2018, and 2020. Though misinformation remains present in large quantities, this time it had less reach, was more spread out, and was harder to find.