Issie Lapowsky

2017: The Year Women Reclaimed the Web

[Commentary] If there was one bright spot in all this darkness—one series of moments when the web actually did live up to the most optimistic expectations—it was that in the year 2017, women took back the very platforms that have been used to torment and troll them for so long, and built a new-wave women’s movement on top of them. The fundamental issues with social media—the divisiveness, the echo chambers, the lack of nuance, the bots—still plague it, in many cases more than ever. But in 2017, women also reminded us all of the upside of connecting online.

It's Super Hard to Find Humans in the FCC's Net Neutrality Comments

The Federal Communications Commissions' public comment period on its plans to repeal net neutrality protections was bombarded with bots, memes, and input from people who don't actually exist. So, with the FCC declining to investigate its own comments, we decided to undertake an analysis of our own. We confirmed six bots and 11 form letters.

Trump’s Campaign Can’t Just Erase History on the Internet

President Donald Trump's overhauled campaign website looks a lot like the original: the resident in a suit and red tie, embedded tweets pillorying #FakeNews, and “Make America Great Again” hats for sale in every color (plus camo, of course). But what really stands out is what’s missing: the entire archive of content published on the site prior to January.

The purge began May 8, after one White House reporter asked press secretary Sean Spicer why the campaign website still included references to the Muslim ban. That same day, during oral arguments in the federal appeals case over the Trump administration’s executive order barring travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert King also pressed Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Wall about the site. Wall argued that the current ban doesn’t discriminate against people on religious grounds, but King insisted the press release contradicts that claim. “He has never repudiated what he said about the Muslim ban,” Judge King said of the president. “It is still on his website.” Within hours it was gone. Within a day, so was every other pesky press release that might someday prove incriminating.

A Silicon Valley Lawmaker’s $1 Trillion Plan to Save Trump Country

Silicon Valley’s newest congressional representative is bringing the idea of basic income to Washington, to the tune of $1 trillion. Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA) - who's district is home to companies like Apple and Intel—would seem to have little chance of persuading the most conservative Congress in memory to blithely give away so much money. But there’s a wrinkle: The biggest beneficiaries wouldn’t be Rep Khanna’s well-heeled constituents in Cupertino or Santa Clara. It’s President Donald Trump’s core supporters in rural America who would have the most to gain.

Rep Khanna is preparing to introduce a bill that he calls “the biggest move in orders of magnitude” toward providing a basic income in the US. Specifically, it proposes a $1 trillion expansion of the earned income tax credit, which would roughly double the amount of money going into low-income families’ pockets. The main difference between Rep Khanna’s plan and the Silicon Valley utopianists’ version of basic income is that for now recipients would still have to have a job to qualify. Think of it more as a basic income warm-up.

Millions Need the Broadband Program the FCC Just Put on Hold

Internet access is at least as crucial to taking part in the 21st-century US economy as a phone or a car. But one-third of adults have no broadband connection at home. For low-income families with a household income of less than $20,000, it’s closer to 60 percent. The new Federal Communication Commission chairman Ajit Pai has promised to close this so-called digital divide. But he recently put a stop to the expansion of a key government program to offer subsidized broadband access to low-income Americans. Advocates and educators say it’s a move that will leave behind.

YouTube Debate Viewership Proves the Power of Digital

The October 9 debate attracted 63 million TV viewers, a 20 percent decline from the first. But on YouTube, debate content—including all videos related to the debate—garnered 124 million views, a 40 percent spike compared with the first. And that’s just on YouTube. Another 3.2 million tuned into Twitter’s livestream, and Facebook’s Live broadcast partnership with ABC News now has 7.4 million views.

Blame it on football season, blame it on the cord cutters, blame it on the gutter-level mudslinging driving some traditional viewers away, or blame it on humans’ technologically enabled short attention spans, but it seems Americans are increasingly interested in watching the debate in bite-sized portions, rather than sitting through the long slog. According to YouTube, viewers tuned into its livestream for an average of 25 minutes. Altogether, though, they watched 2.5 million hours of the livestream. That’s still smaller than the total TV hours watched, but it’s nearly six times more views than YouTube received in 2012. Of course, it can be a little tougher for campaigns to parse these online numbers to figure out whether likely voters actually tuned in.

Peter Thiel: We Must Talk ‘Frankly’ About America’s Problems

A list of speakers for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland (OH) includes Peter Thiel, the litigious Silicon Valley billionaire investor, Facebook board member, and Donald Trump delegate, who, most recently, funded a revenge lawsuit against Gawker that forced the media company into bankruptcy. In a statement, Thiel explained why he wants to appear at the convention, an obligation even top Republicans have ducked. “Many people are uncertain in this election year,” he wrote, “but most Americans agree that our country is on the wrong track. I don’t think we can fix our problems unless we can talk about them frankly.”

In any other election year, Thiel’s presence at the convention wouldn’t be all that surprising. A known libertarian, he was one of the most prominent backers of Ron Paul’s 2012 Super PAC, and during primary season he was a key donor to Carly Fiorina’s Super PAC. But the fact that Trump is 2016’s presumptive Republican nominee makes Thiel’s support curious. On everything from trade to immigration to government data collection, Trump’s policies stand in direct opposition to the ones laid out by major industry groups like the Internet Association and TechNet.