USAToday

Who was trying to influence your vote in the midterm elections? On Facebook, it was not always easy to find out.  Political advertisers are required to fill in a field that says who paid for the message in your news feed, but that does not necessarily tell you who they or their backers are. Entities can write whatever they want in that field as long as it's not deceptive or misleading. A growing number of Facebook ads in the run-up to the election took advantage of that loophole to obscure or conceal the identity and political motives of who paid for them – and Facebook did not catch it.

President Donald Trump, who has accused Google's search engine of being biased against conservatives, is planning to host a conference with executives of internet companies, said his senior economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. The meeting could take place as early as the middle of Oct, White House, Kudlow said.  "We're going to have a little conference – the president will preside over it – we will have big internet companies, big social media companies, search companies," Kudlow said.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have no incentive to inject bias in their platforms, because consumers across the political spectrum use social media and discriminating against any of them could drive people away. Consumers would be substantially worse off if social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were broken up. Their value to consumers derives in no small part from the fact that they allow people to communicate with their friends and families with a single click.

As millions evacuate the mid-Atlantic coastal region ahead of Hurricane Florence, wireless providers are mounting an invasion of support crews and high-tech machinery to repair and restore connectivity in the storm's wake. The incursion includes a menagerie of machines with animal monickers meant to help mend the hurricane-hit area's communications network.