May 2016

INTERNET/BROADBAND

MICROSOFT GRANTS TO ADDRESS INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL DIVIDE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Vindu Goel]
Microsoft finally seems to be settling on a strategy for addressing the great global disconnect: It is going to fund other businesses developing local solutions and help build the ones that show the most promise. The company announced the first winners of grants under a new program called the Affordable Access Initiative. The 12 recipients, who will get $70,000 to $150,000 apiece, include a company in Rwanda franchising solar-powered mobile kiosks that provide Wi-Fi and battery recharges, and an Argentine firm that uses monitoring technologies and chatbots so that farmers can keep tabs remotely on the health of their cattle. Microsoft said it had concluded that grand solutions, conceived and driven by American companies, would take many years to put into practice and would not work everywhere.
benton.org/headlines/microsoft-awards-first-grants-help-expand-global-internet-access | New York Times
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

WIRELESS INDUSTRY SURVEY
[SOURCE: CTIA, AUTHOR: ]
Americans used 9.6 trillion megabytes (MB) of data in 2015, three times the 3.2 trillion MB in 2013. This is the equivalent of consumers streaming 59,219 videos every minute or roughly 18 million MB. Smartphones are the number one wireless device in the US and still growing:
There were more than 228 million smartphones, which was up almost 10 percent from 2014. 70 percent of the population now owns a smartphone.
There were more than 41 million tablets on wireless networks, up 16 percent from 2014.
Smartphones are the number one wireless device in the U.S. and still growing
Americans talked more than 2.8 trillion minutes on their mobile phones, up more than 17 percent from 2014.
Americans exchanged more than 2.1 trillion texts, videos and photo messages, or more than four million every minute.
To handle the increase in devices and usage, America’s wireless carriers invested almost $32 billion in 2015, including adding almost 10,000 new cell sites. Since 2010, carriers have invested more than $177 billion to improve their coverage and capacity to better serve all Americans.
benton.org/headlines/ctias-annual-wireless-industry-survey | CTIA
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ITIF ON ZERO RATING PROGRAMS
[SOURCE: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, AUTHOR: Doug Brake]
Zero rating offers a number of benefits.
First, it is good economics to help advance innovation in information technology markets. Where both content or “edge” firms as well as network operators make large investments in establishing platforms that have relatively low marginal costs, and gain value with each additional user, zero rating can help bring new customers into a firm’s customer base, enhancing the value of the product, and providing additional revenues to defray the investment for additional innovation.
Second, zero rating is an important tool to expand access to information, particularly in developing countries. As of 2015, mobile broadband networks covered about 78 percent of the world’s population, but only 43 percent were actually using the Internet. That 35 percent—some 2.5 billion people—who have access to mobile networks, but choose not to subscribe, could be given the opportunity, with zero-rating programs, to connect at a relatively low cost.
Third, zero rating is generally pro-competitive. There is little difference between zero rating and common-place discounts that sellers provide through middlemen that everyone accepts as normal, like toll-free 800 numbers. Zero rating allows for differentiation of company offerings, both at the application layer and between competing carriers. This ability to differentiate services tends to most benefit maverick firms that change the terms on which firms compete, and allows new applications a foothold to get discovered.
Fourth, consumers enjoy zero rating plans, and appreciate the ability to use zero-rated apps without having to worry about their data limits. We should celebrate when competitive markets work to provide consumers more of what they want. Critics argue that zero rating is against the public interest, but the bar for arguing that the public interest directly contravenes consumer preference should be a high one.
Fifth, zero rating programs can lead to more efficient use of networks if they zero-rated services use fewer bits than a non-zero rated version while having essentially no diminution of quality and customer experience.
Lastly, zero rating can help facilitate more efficient advertising, leading to more transactions online, boosting economic growth and adding fuel to continued growth in the advertising supported Internet.
benton.org/headlines/mobile-zero-rating-economics-and-innovation-behind-free-data | Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
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CONTENT

[SOURCE: Facebook, AUTHOR: Colin Stretch]
Our Trending Topics feature is a recent innovation designed to connect people to topics that people are talking about on Facebook. This is in addition to (and separate from) an individual’s News Feed, which is the central way that most people discover information and connect with others on Facebook. Suppressing political content or preventing people from seeing what matters most to them is directly contrary to Facebook’s mission and our business objectives. When anonymous allegations of political bias recently surfaced in relation to Facebook’s Trending Topics feature, we immediately launched an investigation to determine if anyone violated the integrity of the feature or acted in ways that are inconsistent with Facebook’s policies and mission. We spoke with current reviewers and their supervisors, as well as a cross-section of former reviewers; spoke with our contractor; reviewed our guidelines, training, and practices; examined the effectiveness of operational oversight designed to identify and correct mistakes and abuse; and analyzed data on the implementation of our guidelines by reviewers. Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature.
benton.org/headlines/facebook-responds-senate-commerce-committee | Facebook
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THUNE RESPONDS TO FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: US Senate Commerce Committee, AUTHOR: Chairman John Thune (R-SD)]
Private companies are fully entitled to espouse their own views, so I appreciate Facebook’s efforts to address allegations of bias raised in the media and my concern about a lack of transparency in its methodology for determining trending topics. Facebook has been forthcoming about with how it determines trending topics, and steps it will take to minimize the risk of bias from individual human judgment. The seriousness with which Facebook has treated these allegations and its desire to serve as an open platform for all viewpoints is evident and encouraging and I look forward to the company’s actions meeting its public rhetoric. Facebook’s description of the methodology it uses for determining the trending content it highlights for users is far different from and more detailed than what it offered prior to our questions. We now know the system relied on human judgment, and not just an automated process, more than previously acknowledged. Facebook has recognized the limitations of efforts to keep information systems fully free from potential bias, which lends credibility to its findings. While the committee remains open to new information on this matter, transparency – not regulation – remains the goal, so I thank the company for its efforts to acknowledge relevant facts and its recognition of a continuing need to transparently address relevant user questions.”
Facebook Inc.’s general counsel Colin Stretch wrote that the company’s two-week internal investigation “revealed no evidence of systematic political bias,” and outlined changes to protect the feature from potential misuse as part of a neutral platform going forward. The response, requested by Chairman Thune, did note that company guidance, prior to July 2015, may have in some instances led to the exclusion of popular topics because it “prevented or delayed acceptance of topics that were not covered by major news organizations,” and that the company could not “fully exclude the possibility that, over the years of the feature’s existence, a specific reviewer took isolated actions with an improper motive.”
benton.org/headlines/chairman-thune-statement-facebook-response-questions-about-trending-topics-bias | US Senate Commerce Committee
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MACHINE BIAS
[SOURCE: ProPublica, AUTHOR: Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, Lauren Kirchner]
Risk assessments, computer programs that produce a score based on the likelihood of person committing a future crime, are increasingly common in courtrooms across the nation. They are used to inform decisions about who can be set free at every stage of the criminal justice system, from assigning bond amounts to even more fundamental decisions about defendants’ freedom. ProPublica obtained the risk scores assigned to more than 7,000 people arrested in Broward County (FL) in 2013 and 2014 and checked to see how many were charged with new crimes over the next two years, the same benchmark used by the creators of the algorithm. The score proved remarkably unreliable in forecasting violent crime: Only 20 percent of the people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so. When a full range of crimes were taken into account — including misdemeanors such as driving with an expired license — the algorithm was somewhat more accurate than a coin flip. Of those deemed likely to re-offend, 61 percent were arrested for any subsequent crimes within two years. We also turned up significant racial disparities. In forecasting who would re-offend, the algorithm made mistakes with black and white defendants at roughly the same rate but in very different ways.The formula was particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants. White defendants were mislabeled as low risk more often than black defendants. Could this disparity be explained by defendants’ prior crimes or the type of crimes they were arrested for? No. We ran a statistical test that isolated the effect of race from criminal history and recidivism, as well as from defendants’ age and gender. Black defendants were still 77 percent more likely to be pegged as at higher risk of committing a future violent crime and 45 percent more likely to be predicted to commit a future crime of any kind.
benton.org/headlines/machine-bias-theres-software-used-across-country-predict-future-criminals-and-its-biased | ProPublica
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

TRUMP UNITES SILICON VALLEY – AGAINST HIM
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Evan Halper]
The innovation economy has a serious distaste for Donald Trump. The masters of this world complain that his ignorance about their work and its relationship to the global economy is horrifying. Rank-and-file programmers are quick to call him a clown, or worse. The unity is notable in an environment where groupthink is frowned upon and nobody ever seems to color inside ideological lines. Trump has practically written a playbook on how not to court this well-heeled group that other politicians seem desperate to shower with affection. Ambitious start-up CEOs who swore off talking politics for fear of offending investors are enlisting in campaigns to discredit Trump. Longtime valley Republican stalwarts who have voted for every GOP nominee for decades say they can’t do it this year. The libertarian-minded innovators who just want to get government out of their way have less faith in Trump than they do in even Hillary Clinton, the Democrat with big plans to grow the bureaucracy. “At least Clinton is not going to go in and burn the place down,” said Reed Galen, a GOP consultant who advises tech companies. “But Trump comes in, and God knows what happens.” The grievances that innovation leaders have with Trump are almost too many to list. They are baffled by an immigration policy that they warn would be disastrous for their workforce. Trump's trade agenda, they say, threatens to tear apart global business relationships crucial to tech industry success. The candidate’s threat to boycott Apple as it tussled with law enforcement over encryption technology will not soon be forgotten.
benton.org/headlines/donald-trump-has-done-unthinkable-unite-silicon-valley | Los Angeles Times
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May 2016

Google’s Project Ara is about more than just modular phones

Public Knowledge Encourages Silicon Valley to Make Diversity in Tech a Priority

May 24, 2016 (Microsoft Grants; CTIA Survey; Trump the Uniter)

Donald Trump has done the unthinkable: Unite Silicon Valley

Microsoft Awards First Grants to Help Expand Global Internet Access

How Twitter helped eighth-graders at a Vermont school learn science