Molly Wood

A Q&A with Mignon Clyburn, outgoing commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. 

A Q&A with Phil Weiser, a professor of law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado, about the state of online political advertising. 

Among the list of banned advertising on Facebook you’ll find the usual suspects: guns, drugs, porn etc. Also, on that list? Bad grammar, and recently added, cryptocurrencies. When it comes to political campaign ads however, the rules are few and far between. Unlike television, radio and print ads, online campaign ads don’t face federal regulations.

A Q&A with Christopher Mitchell, director of Community Broadband Networks for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. 

What's the news that's getting buried by the news? A lot, actually. We're taking a look at one major story: media consolidation. This week, Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood chat with Zeynep Tufekci, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about how one media deal will transform how you consume media. Marketplace's Adriene Hill helps us get smarter about how the television industry keeps making money despite digital competition. Plus, Annabelle Gurwitch, an actor and writer, shares stories about life in TV.

[Commentary] If we just blindly build networks of roads and bridges that are just like the ones we built in the 1950s, we could miss out on opportunities to nurture the autonomous car industry, innovative energy technologies, drone delivery airspace, and expanded broadband infrastructure. Or, heck, we might only need half as many actual roads if autonomous cars really do end up dramatically reducing the number of vehicles on them. Infrastructure investment is a stated goal of President-elect Donald Trump—he originally promised a $1 trillion investment, which then dropped to about half, according to the Trump transition website.

But by most analyses, that plan actually depends on investment by private companies who’ll get big tax breaks for embarking on infrastructure projects. There’s some skepticism about why those private companies might get involved in such large, expensive undertakings, but if they do, maybe that’ll mean they’re also investing in high-tech experiments that could pay off for all of us in the long run. Or maybe the chance to develop and eventually sell futuristic tech will motivate them to invest in the first place.

To keep all the subscriptions straight, and to avoid paying for services no longer wanted or needed (or forgotten about entirely), it is worthwhile to conduct a regular audit of your digital life.

[Commentary] Social media can be a harmless and easy way to keep track of friends, family and news. It can also be addictive and invasive and produce an archive of bad behavior that can damage relationships or make it hard to get a new job.

And, of course, there are privacy worries compounded by a controversial Facebook experiment unearthed recently that turned unwitting users into emotionally manipulated guinea pigs. That last one might prompt some people to leave Facebook permanently. Or not -- it wasn’t exactly the first time Facebook has done something that made some users swear off the service.

So is quitting social media the new thing in social media? That’s hard to say. For many users, the distractions, manipulations and targeted ads of social media are still worth it for keeping up with friends and family. But it’s still wise to exercise control over your social media history, even if quitting is too radical a step in this connected world.

When it comes to online video, people may not want to cut the cord. Instead, they want to take the cord with them. People are streaming broadcast television on their smartphones in record numbers, according to Adobe’s state-of-the-industry report on digital video viewing.

Online video has reached record numbers, according to the report, compiled by Adobe Digital Index, the marketing and research arm of Adobe. Mobile video viewing went up 57 percent over the same time in 2013, and overall online video was up 43 percent, representing more than 35 billion viewings. Among the report’s more interesting findings are that TV Everywhere -- a term for authenticated viewing of broadcast shows from channels you subscribe to on your cable or satellite network -- is approaching mainstream use and is growing much faster than other online video sources like YouTube, Hulu or Daily Motion.

However, Adobe’s numbers do not include Netflix, which has about 48 million subscribers worldwide, so cord-cutting might not be entirely off the table. Authenticated TV viewing is more palatable to content providers than services like Netflix, because it encourages people to keep their ad-rich cable subscriptions, and gives them the benefit of streaming the TV they already pay for.

[Commentary] Some parents are already busy planning their kids’ online presence -- registering their babies for things like Facebook, web URLs, About.me pages, Instagram feeds, Twitter handles, Tumblr accounts and email accounts on Yahoo and Gmail, all within hours of their birth. It might be too early to call these behaviors a growing trend, but they’re certainly fueling a debate about how to handle children and their online lives. But there could be a risk here. Should you post photos of your children on sites that can be seen by anyone, or even on private profiles? If you give them Facebook accounts or email addresses, are you starting a data record for them before they’re old enough to know any better? Are you signing your child up for targeted advertising at age zero? If anything, a child today who grows up and discovers he has no photos on Facebook or Instagram might think of himself as an unloved anomaly. In an age of obsessive digital detailing, if a child grows up unrecorded, what is his identity at all?

As the messaging wars heat up, security seems to be the big differentiator -- the levels of security range from “military grade” to lightweight, depending on the app. But all of them have one thing in common, said the cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier: You shouldn’t use them if your life is on the line.