New York Times

Though Snapchat has overtaken Twitter in terms of daily users to become one of the most popular social networks in the world, it has not attracted the media attention that the 140-character platform earns, perhaps because journalists and presidential candidates don’t use it very much.

Snapchat’s news division has become a popular and innovative source of information for young people, but it is rarely mentioned in the hand-wringing over how social media affected the presidential election. Snap, which is based far outside the Silicon Valley bubble, in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles (CA), is pushing radically new ideas about how humans should interact with computers. It is pioneering a model of social networking that feels more intimate and authentic than the Facebook-led ideas that now dominate the online world. Snap’s software and hardware designs, as well as its marketing strategies, are more daring than much of what we’ve seen from tech giants, including Apple.

Uber asserted that it was helping to bolster Europe’s digital economy as part of its defense in a long-awaited hearing to decide how the popular ride-hailing service should be able to operate across the region. The case at the European Court of Justice comes as the American company continues to push aggressively into overseas markets, often butting heads with local lawmakers and taxi associations that say the company flouts transportation and competition rules.

Uber has expanded into more than 300 cities across six continents and has an estimated value of $68 billion. Europe’s legal challenge represents a direct attack on how Uber operates in the region, one of its most important markets. It also raises questions about the company’s growth plans as it looks to expand beyond ride-hailing to food delivery and other online services. In its defense at the hearing, the company framed itself as a new player in Europe’s often lackluster digital economy, offering users and drivers new ways to connect and helping to support cities’ existing transportation networks.

When the white nationalist leader Richard B. Spencer was suspended from Twitter recently, he hopped over to YouTube to address his supporters. “Digitally speaking,” he said, Twitter had sent “execution squads across the alt-right.” He accused Twitter of “purging people on the basis of their views,” calling it “corporate Stalinism.” Then he mapped out a path forward. “There’s obviously Gab, which is an interesting medium,” he said. “I think that will be the place where we go next.”

Gab is a new social network built like a hybrid of Twitter and Reddit — posts are capped at 300 characters, and the crowd votes to boost or demote posts in the feed. But Gab’s defining feature is its user guidelines, or rather, its lack thereof. Gab bans illegal activities — child pornography, threats of violence, terrorism — and not much else. Think of Gab as the Make America Great Again of social sites: It’s a throwback to the freewheeling norms of the old Internet, before Twitter started cracking down on harassment and Reddit cleaned out its darkest corners. And since its debut in August, it has emerged as a digital safe space for the far right, where white nationalists, conspiracy-theorist YouTubers, and minivan majority moms can gather without liberal interference.

Steven Terner Mnuchin, a financier with deep roots on Wall Street and in Hollywood but no government experience, is expected to be named President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary, apparently. Mnuchin, 53, was the national finance chairman for President-elect Trump’s campaign. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner, before creating his own hedge fund, moving to the West Coast and entering the first rank of movie financiers by bankrolling hits like the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar.”

As Treasury secretary, Mnuchin would play an important role in shaping the administration’s economic policies, including a package of promised tax cuts, increased spending on infrastructure and changes in the terms of foreign trade. He could also help lead any effort to roll back President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and opening to Cuba by reimposing sanctions on Tehran and Havana.

She is a woman and an immigrant, a fixture of the Republican establishment for two decades. She is a savvy and professional practitioner of the capital’s inside game. And now she is going to work for President-elect Donald J. Trump. Trump named Elaine L. Chao as his choice to be the next secretary of transportation, elevating someone whose background and experience are in many respects completely at odds with the brash and disruptive tenor of his anti-Washington campaign. His transportation secretary is likely to be one of the more essential players. President-elect Trump, a real estate magnate, has said that infrastructure redevelopment will be a priority of his first 100 days in office. And Chao has experience — politically and personally — in navigating the competing centers of power in the capital. She is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

With millions of people regularly tuning in to his YouTube video blogs every morning, Casey Neistat has a millennial fan base coveted by both marketers and media companies. Now, one of those big media outlets is bringing Neistat — and, it hopes, his youthful audience — in-house. CNN announced that it had agreed to acquire the technology and talent behind Beme, the social media app built and started by Neistat and Matt Hackett, a former vice president of engineering at Tumblr. Beme’s 12 employees will join CNN as part of the deal, the terms of which were not publicly disclosed.

Beme was intended to be a social sharing application that Neistat described as “more authentic,” a way of putting four-second bursts of video out into the social sphere without giving users the ability to edit or tweak the content. Taking video was as simple as holding a smartphone’s front-facing sensor to one’s body, as if the camera were an extension of one’s chest. Neistat hopes to bring that idea of authenticity to a news and media environment to draw in a younger audience largely untapped by the cable news network. CNN will shut down the Beme app, which had 1.2 million downloads before losing steam.

[Commentary] With the demand for wireless broadband growing, the Federal Communications Commission is auctioning off a big chunk of the public airwaves. Billions of dollars are likely to change hands, a windfall that could transform local media across the country.

This broadband spectrum is now used by TV stations to broadcast their signals to the comparatively small number of customers who rely on antenna reception at a time when most people use cable, satellite or streaming services. The proceeds from these sales could produce enormous public benefits if they are used to build a 21st-century infrastructure for public interest media. For states, communities and universities holding licenses in play, the auction presents an important opportunity to invest in new ways to meet the information needs of the public. At least 54 public television stations in 18 states and the District of Columbia applied to participate in the auction, according to research by the nonprofit group Free Press. These include three stations in the Los Angeles market, a major outlet on Chicago’s South Side, and the public station at Howard University in Washington. Each could be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps nowhere is there a better opportunity to take advantage of the auction than in New Jersey. The governor and State Legislature should create a permanent fund to support a new model for public-interest media, financed by a significant portion of any auction revenue. This approach could serve as a model for other states, universities and communities seeking to sell their spectrum.

[Daggett is the president and chief executive of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation]

In July 2015, a judge in Barcelona referred a case to the European Court of Justice, asking the Luxembourg-based court to determine whether Uber should be treated as a transportation service or merely as a digital platform. If the court decides that Uber is a transportation service, the company will have to obey Europe’s often onerous labor and safety rules, and comply with rules that apply to traditional taxi associations.

Though Uber already fulfills such requirements in many European countries, the ruling could hamper its expansion plans. But if the judges rule that Uber is an “information society service,” or an online platform that merely matches independent drivers with potential passengers, then the company will have greater scope to offer low-cost products like UberPop and other services that have been banned in many parts of Europe. A ruling is not expected before March 2017 at the earliest. The judges may decide to consider Uber a transportation service, an online platform, or a combination of the two, further complicating the legal standoff.

[Commentary] For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.

Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their personality scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients: Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the primaries, President-elect Donald Trump in the general election. Cambridge is reportedly backed by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Trump’s campaign chairman and is set to be his chief strategist in the White House.

[McKenzie Funk, an Open Society fellow, is a founding member of the journalism cooperative Deca.]

Apple iPhones and other hand-held devices have long had an airplane mode that shuts off wireless communications to prevent interference with the vast electronics systems that control modern aircraft. Now federal auto safety regulators want makers of these devices to add a driver mode to modify or block certain apps and features to keep a driver’s attention on the road.

The initiative comes in the form of voluntary guidelines that will be issued Nov 23 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They arrive amid a spike in traffic fatalities in the last two years and increasing concerns about the distractions posed by smartphones and the many apps that Americans are using while behind the wheel. The guidelines call on electronics manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to design future operating systems that limit the functionality and simplify interfaces while a vehicle is in motion and to develop technology to identify when the devices are being used by a driver while driving. That would ensure the limits are placed on drivers and not other vehicle occupants.