Brookings

The online economy has not resolved the issue of race-based ad targeting. In Oct, in response to public outcry over a new feature enabling advertisers to deliberately exclude members of its “ethnic affinities” category from particular campaigns, Facebook stopped ethnicity-based, target marketing for certain ads, specifically housing, employment, and the extension of credit. Despite Facebook’s initial justification of its ability to “serve highly relevant content to affinity-based audiences,” an initial letter from four members of the Congressional Black Caucus, followed by a class-action lawsuit, found the practice to be in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws and symptomatic of Silicon Valley’s lack of workforce diversity.

The social media giant joins a host of other high tech companies that find themselves wedged between the values of permissionless innovation, which seeks to remove barriers to entry for technology experimentation, and the social responsibility to protected classes, particularly in sheltering racial and ethnic groups from either explicit discrimination, unconscious bias, or both.

It’s not often that the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission becomes known outside the relatively narrow confines of those who are regulated by the FCC. But Newton N. Minow broke that mold six decades ago, and recently he became the first FCC Chairman ever to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.

Minow, only 35 years old when appointed by President Kennedy, achieved what now would be considered viral status by telling the National Association of Broadcasters in May 1961 that their members’ programming was a “vast wasteland.” That speech, and especially this memorable phrase, brought him appearances on Meet the Press, the cover of Time magazine, and even the question to an answer on Jeopardy. But there is so much more to this man than his challenge to the dominant media industry with a catchphrase that has endured for over a half century. His tenure as FCC Chairman was quite brief (about two years), but the impact he had truly shaped the communications revolution. Perhaps his strong suit as FCC Chairman beyond using the bully pulpit of his position was his ability to forge consensus and work closely with Congress in crafting impactful new legislation.

For the past eight years, gridlock in Washington, DC left city and metro leaders with an inconsistent partner in the federal government, spurring what Jennifer Bradley and I have termed a “metropolitan revolution” of bottom-up innovation across the country. But with Donald Trump and the Republicans’ electoral victory, the wheels of the federal government are about to get moving again; this time, with a burst of conservative activism not seen in decades.

While Republicans, as of this writing, received a plurality of votes cast for Congress nationwide this year—49.9 percent according data from the Cook Political Report—they received a greater share, 55.2 percent, of the seats. Democrats, as a result, won a smaller share of seats than they did votes: 44.8 percent of seats as compared to 47.3 percent of the votes. (These numbers may change as final vote tallies are updated.)

In the past four congressional elections, then, Republicans, as the party with the majority in the House, received a “seats bonus,” wherein members of their party secured a larger share of the seats in the chamber than the share of votes won nationwide. As we see in the figure below—again using data from Vital Stats and the Cook Political Report—this is a durable feature of U.S. congressional elections. Using the overall vote share (rather than the two-party vote), the figure depicts the difference between the share of the votes and seats won by the party winning the congressional majority. The black line indicates the historical average, at 5.6 percentage points.

Under Trump’s Administration, no other sector will undergo as many fundamental changes as healthcare. President-elect Trump’s healthcare policies have been particularly vague; although he is intent on repealing Affordable Care Act, we are not certain about his solutions for replacing it, other than the proposal to allow health insurers to compete in multiple states.

While the exact outcomes of such proposal remain to be carefully analyzed, the idea behind it – fostering competition and relying on the invisible hand of the free market – may be a sound solution to our nation’s health information technology challenges. Over the past decade, despite spending billions of dollars, government interference in the health IT market has only resulted in small victories and big failures. In the following, I lay out a set of recommendations for fostering interoperability and protecting patient privacy as the two most important challenges in the health IT domain over the next four years.

Over the past several years, concerns that technology and globalization lead to ever greater inequality have reached fever pitch in the US and beyond. To understand what’s behind this anxiety, three distinctions are useful.

First is to distinguish global inequality and its two components: inequality within countries and inequality between countries. Distinction two: inequality in developed versus developing economies. In the former, the trend is clear—nearly all developed economies have seen inequality rise over the past generation. Distinction three is between inequality in market income and disposable income. Until now we have described the inequality of disposable income, net of the effects of government taxes and benefits, which serve to reduce the inequality of market outcomes

The world needs to urgently rethink the way education is done, how it is delivered, and what skills children will need in a digital age to become healthy and productive members of society. The case can be made that children are not learning the skills they need, at least in part because the conventional approaches to delivering education are not effective for fostering breadth of skills.

One central aspect of this debate is how best to apply technology to learning and practice. Increased connectivity is changing how knowledge is transmitted. Libraries are being digitized. Classes and course materials once accessible only to the rich or well-connected are now within reach via a smartphone. Yet in schools, technology has largely failed to systematically transform the teaching and learning environment. While low-cost devices like mobile phones have reached many, today almost 2 billion people remain untouched by digital technology, making it clear that connectivity is neither a panacea for solving the global learning challenge, nor should it be a top education priority.

A progressive technology agenda was promoted and executed over the last eight years, and in spite of party differences, the new Trump Administration might want to adopt these actions. Issues that include network neutrality, spectrum, Lifeline modernization, patent reform, Internet of things, smart cities, along with the current digital inclusion initiatives, such as ConnectAll, ConnectEd, and ConnectHome, have all been part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to foster competitive, sustainable, and inclusive information policies. And given the highly rural demographic composition of Trump voters, the new administration should consider many of these and other new tech policy initiatives that will directly benefit their constituents, particularly those related to broadband deployment, adoption, and use.

Summer 2016, the United Nations declared that it considers the Internet to be a human right. Specifically, an addition was made to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Section 32 adds “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet” and another 15 recommendations that cover the rights of those who work in and rely on Internet access. It also applies to women, girls, and those heavily impacted by the digital divide. In a world where

Internet shutdowns are increasing year to year, it is important that the right steps are taken to improve the relationship between governments and citizens and to uphold all human rights. The UN could advance the cause of universal Internet access by using the sustainable development goals as a stepping stone; those whose livelihoods depend on Internet access or who fear that their access will be terminated will have the most to gain. The 193 signatory countries have already committed to improving Internet quality, sustainability, and accessibility—a first step to Internet access truly being treated as a human right.

The new Internet service provider privacy rules mandate that consumers must affirmatively opt-in to allow ISP sharing of their app and browsing histories, mobile location data, and any other identifiable information that can be gleaned from internet use. Otherwise, ISPs will be prohibited from undertaking such activities. Behavioral information is the fuel for online targeted advertising. This allows advertisers to tailor their messages and sales offers to consumers who best fit their buying profiles. To advertisers, aggregating real-time information online about consumer interest has significant economic value.

For now, better consumer education should inform the general public about when and how to opt in or opt out, and which entities offer which option. Here, an impactful public service advertising campaign coordinated by The Advertising Council, the non-profit organization and the largest producer of public service programs in the United States, may be an important next step.