Geoffrey Fowler

About 200 million people live in parts of America with only one or two options for reliable, fast Internet, according to the White House. Internet service providers also get to sell service using techniques borrowed from used car salesmen; they bundle Internet access with cable TV without telling you how much you’re paying for each, concoct arbitrary charges for using “too much” data, and lock whole apartment buildings into exclusi

The government has a new program, the Emergency Broadband Benefit, to help Americans pay their Internet bills. Unfortunately, companies like Verizon are twisting it into an opportunity for an upsell. All Internet service provider participation in the program is voluntary, and each ISP gets to write some of its own rules for how to hand out the money.

Without us even realizing it, the Internet’s most-used website has been getting worse. On too many queries, Google is more interested in making search lucrative than a better product for us. There’s one reason it gets away with this, according to a recent congressional investigation: Google is so darn big.

5G may hold promise for the years ahead — but across most of America in 2020, a 5G phone does diddly squat. Testing 5G phones, I’ve been clocking download speeds that are roughly the same as on 4G LTE ones. And in some places, like inside my house and along the California highway, my 5G phones actually have been slower. Your experience with a 5G phone in 2020 is likely to be all over the map. I got searing fast 750 Mbps downloads from AT&T in one corner of downtown. But in the same spot, my 4G phone got an also extremely fast 330 Mbps.

Some 45 times — I was counting — the Facebook CEO told members of Congress that we’re in control of our data, when it’s plainly impossible for most people to figure out how to do so. That makes it hard to buy what he’s selling, even if it’s free. Zuckerberg has never really explained just how much data Facebook collects and what it does with it.

[Commentary] A storm dubbed #DeleteFacebook is brewing in techie communities, on Twitter and — irony alert — on Facebook. The idea is this time is different from all the other times the social network has violated our trust. There have been many calls to boycott Facebook for past indiscretions. If we want the result to be any different this time, we need to address the broader problem. Aside from a dramatic change of heart from founder Mark Zuckerberg, getting Facebook to reform what data it collects and how it uses it requires destabilizing its business.

Let’s talk about the end of net neutrality in terms of a hellscape everyone knows: airport security lines. Imagine Verizon and Comcast are running the security lines—and websites and services are the ones trying to get through. With net neutrality, all those sites pass through at the same speed. But of course, airport security these days is all about a pecking order. There’s regular security and there’s the faster “TSA Pre” line.

Beyond a photo, the iPhone X’s front sensors scan 30,000 points to make a 3D model of your face. That’s how the iPhone X unlocks and makes animations that might have once required a Hollywood studio. Now that a phone can scan your mug, what else might apps want to do with it? They could track your expressions to judge if you’re depressed. They could guess your gender, race and even sexuality. They might combine your face with other data to observe you in stores—or walking down the street. Apps aren’t doing most of these things, yet. But is Apple doing enough to stop it?

On Nov 1, Congress released some of the 3,000 Facebook ads and Twitter accounts created by Russian operatives to sway American voters.  These disturbing messages, seen by up to 126 million Americans, raise thorny questions about Silicon Valley’s responsibility for vetting the information it publishes.

Facebook wants to get us more politically active in the real world. Facebook has rolled out a nonpartisan civic engagement service in the US called Town Hall. It identifies your elected officials—even local ones—sends reminders to vote and goads you to pick up the phone. It is one of the first glimpses of how Facebook will execute on Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of using the social network’s influence—built on keeping up with friends—to address humanity’s biggest problems.