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Facebook struck customized data-sharing deals with a select group of companies, some of which had special access to user records well after the point in 2015 that the social-media giant has said it cut off all developers from that information, according to court documents.  The unreported agreements, known internally as “whitelists,” also allowed certain companies to access additional information about a user’s Facebook friends.

On October 19th of 2017, a just-barely bipartisan group of senators held a press conference to announce a new piece of legislation. The Honest Ads Act, as the bill is called, would require Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms to retain copies of the political ads they host and make them available for public inspection. Platforms would have to release information about who bought the ads, how much they cost, and to whom the ads were targeted. Anyone who spent more than $500 on political ads would be subject to public scrutiny.

A strict new real-time disclosure law has forced Google to suspend political advertising in the Washington state. "Ads related to ballot measures and state and local elections in the state of Washington, U.S.A., will not be accepted," a new Google policy says. The new rules were enacted by Washington state's Public Disclosure Commission to implement provisions of new campaign finance legislation that was passed in March. The rules require ad brokers like Google to provide information to the public about who is funding political ads and how those ads are being targeted.

The CEO of a small wireless carrier that offers consumers an alternative to the major cell phone companies says AT&T refused to run its ads on AT&T's DirecTV service as a way to suppress competition with the telecom giant's own wireless service. AT&T, which is fighting an anti-trust suit brought by the Department of Justice that aims to halt its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, now says it's changed the policy that kept Mint Mobile's ads off its pay TV service.

As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information. Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s new privacy law, is drawing advertising money toward Google’s online-ad services and away from competitors that are straining to show they’re complying with the sweeping regulation. The reason: the Alphabet ad giant is gathering individuals’ consent for targeted advertising at far higher rates than many competing online-ad services, early data show.

As Facebook and Alphabet's Google continue to dominate digital ad sales, publishers are increasingly teaming up to give themselves a better shot at competing with the tech giants. New York Media, PopSugar and Rolling Stone are all joining Concert, a digital advertising marketplace operated by Vox Media. Concert shares ad revenue with publishers in the network, but declined to disclose the share each party keeps. Concert, which is a joint venture of Vox Media and Comcast’s NBCUniversal, still lags far behind the biggest tech giants in terms of global audience size.

On June 5, California holds its congressional primaries and in one largely rural district, there is a new kind of money entering politics: payments to Facebook, where messages can be sharply targeted and it's cheaper to advertise than on radio, TV or newspapers. In CA's 4th Congressional District, one political novice bought his way into relevance using the social network, and has helped shape a hotly contested Democratic race, stirring up animosity in the process.

A Q&A with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. 

If politicians in the US make the mistake of over-regulating big tech, Chinese competitors could easily take over the market, according to Sen Mark Warner (D-VA). When asked if tech giants should be broken up under antitrust laws, Sen Warner said regulators need to be careful not to be too “heavy-handed” because breaking up those companies could create an opening for Chinese competitors.