Wired

Rep Cicilline (D-RI) Bill Would Let Publishers Gang Up Versus Facebook and Google

Rep David Cicilline (D-RI) plans to introduce a bill that would exempt publishers from antitrust enforcement so they can negotiate collectively over terms for distributing their content. Rep Cicilline says the bill is designed to level the playing field between publishers and the tech giants, not dictate the outcome. Without an exemption, collective action by publishers could run afoul of antitrust laws around colluding over price or refusal to deal with competitors.

What Facebook Isn't Saying About Trump's and Clinton's Campaign Ads

According to Facebook, during the 2016 election, President Donald Trump’s campaign actually paid higher rates to advertise on the platform overall than Hillary Clinton’s campaign did. But, Facebook's chart does not show what the Clinton and Trump campaigns would have paid for an apples-to-apples ad buy.

Senate Democrats Have a Plan to Save Net Neutrality

[Commentary] Senate Democrats are proposing to undo the FCC’s wrongheaded rule through a process set up by the Congressional Review Act. [O]ne more vote [is needed] to ensure the internet remains free and accessible to all. That vote must come from the ranks of the Republicans, who so far have sided with internet service providers, the only group that is clamoring to remove the important consumer protections enshrined in net neutrality.

President Trump Names Digital Guru Brad Parscale Campaign Manager for 2020 Run

The former digital director of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Brad Parscale, has been named campaign manager for the 2020 re-election campaign. A political novice prior to the 2016 race, Parscale oversaw the campaign’s digital operations from the San Antonio (TX) offices of his web design and strategy firm Giles-Parscale.

How President Trump Conquered Facebook -- Without Russian Ads

[Commentary] No matter how you look at them, Russia’s Facebook ads were almost certainly less consequential than the Trump campaign’s mastery of two critical parts of the Facebook advertising infrastructure: The ads auction, and a benign-sounding but actually Orwellian product called Custom Audiences (and its diabolical little brother, Lookalike Audiences).

Gothamist Lives, Thanks to a Boost from Public Radio

After billionaire Joe Ricketts announced the shuttering of local news organizations Gothamist and DNAInfo last fall, readers across the country mourned the loss of the beloved sites, and worried about the vulnerability of journalism in the digital age. Now, a consortium of public radio stations, including WNYC in New York, WAMU in Washington DC, and KPCC in Southern California, has banded together to bring some of those sites back from the dead.The three stations are acquiring the assets of Gothamist and some of its associated sites, including LAist, DCist, and DNAInfo.

Pro-Gun Russia Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting

In the wake of Feb 14's Parkland (FL) school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. As of morning, shooting-related terms dominated the site’s trending hashtags and topics, including Parkland, guncontrolnow, Florida, guncontrol, and Nikolas Cruz, the name of the alleged shooter.

Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook -- and the World

This is the story of the two years [at Facebook since the runup to the 2016 election], as they played out inside and around the company. Wired spoke with 51 current or former Facebook employees for this article. The stories varied, but most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege.

How Ephemeral Messaging Threatens History

[Commentary] Our thoughts are still being documented more than ever. In a world where we’re increasingly communicating through our phones rather than in person, app developers are making it easier than ever to communicate exactly what we want to exactly who we want. The most successful apps, moreover, are the ones which most effectively reward the greatest quantity of communication: we’ve been trained by highly sophisticated Silicon Valley behaviorists to tweet or Snap or otherwise communicate almost every thing—really, everything—we think or feel or see.

America Needs More Fiber

[Commentary] The solution to the country’s digital divide isn’t going to come from private-market competition, but rather from massive government mobilization. Just don’t call it “nationalization.”