New York Times

CORRECTION: Our headline originally stated EFF filed the complaint.

A leading privacy group filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over a 2012 study in which Facebook manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users of the social network to see what effect the changes would have on their emotions.

The group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Facebook had deceived its users and violated the terms of a 2012 consent decree with the FTC, which is the principal regulatory agency overseeing consumer privacy in the United States.

“The company purposefully messed with people’s minds,” the advocacy group wrote in its complaint. “At the time of the experiment, Facebook did not state in the Data Use Policy that user data would be used for research purposes. Facebook also failed to inform users that their personal information would be shared with researchers.”

[Commentary] When The Times launched its India Ink blog in September 2011, it noted that this was the paper’s “first-ever country-specific site for news, information, culture and conversation.” Now it’s gone.

These days, that kind of specificity is no longer the way The Times wants to direct its resources -- at least not in the form of a blog, and all that usually comes with it: embedded content, reverse-chronological order, curation of other source material and a personal or conversational tone.

“We want to continue this kind of journalism without the manufactured shell of a blog, with its constant pressure to fill it up,” said Ian Fisher, an assistant managing editor. That will happen, he said, through blog-style pieces that crop up when needed.

The Times recently decided to end The Lede, a pioneering effort that aggregated news content on major breaking stories. That, he said, “was getting increasingly incoherent” in its purpose and was “losing its value.” It was also taking a lot of staff hours to keep it going.

Andrew Beaujon of Poynter.org reported that the closing of The Lede was part of a bigger strategy that will end about half of The Times’s blogs. Fisher went a step further saying that The Times already has ended or merged about half of the 60 or so blogs that it had at the high point in 2012, and there may be about another 10 to go, although nothing is on the chopping block at this moment.

My take is this: For dedicated readers of individual blogs, there is no doubt a loss in this move. When you’re very interested in a single topic, it’s great to have a place that constantly aggregates news and commentary, adds new information and, in general, speaks to your passion.

[Commentary] Social media can be a harmless and easy way to keep track of friends, family and news. It can also be addictive and invasive and produce an archive of bad behavior that can damage relationships or make it hard to get a new job.

And, of course, there are privacy worries compounded by a controversial Facebook experiment unearthed recently that turned unwitting users into emotionally manipulated guinea pigs. That last one might prompt some people to leave Facebook permanently. Or not -- it wasn’t exactly the first time Facebook has done something that made some users swear off the service.

So is quitting social media the new thing in social media? That’s hard to say. For many users, the distractions, manipulations and targeted ads of social media are still worth it for keeping up with friends and family. But it’s still wise to exercise control over your social media history, even if quitting is too radical a step in this connected world.

The Wall Street Journal has cut between 20 and 40 staff members in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, as part of a re-evaluation of its newsroom that came at the end of its financial year.

Some of those laid off were informed at the end of June, which also marked the final days of the newspaper’s fiscal year. The layoffs have not been announced to the newsroom staff, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, declined to answer specific questions on the layoffs, or confirm the details, but provided a statement saying it had been evaluating the newsroom “to target areas for growth and deploy our resources globally.” As a result, Dow Jones said, “we will be eliminating certain positions.”

Those laid off include veteran reporters and editors at the newspaper.

Do two instances mean the start of a trend -- or is it still just an experiment? In May 2014, On Site Opera, a small New York company, presented a production of Rameau’s “Pygmalion,” at which operagoers were encouraged to use Google Glass, the eyeglasslike computer, onto which a translation of the libretto was projected.

It was by no means an amateur operation or a frivolous stunt: the technology used to project the subtitles to Google Glass was created by Figaro Systems, the company that makes the seat-back title panels used at the Metropolitan Opera, the Santa Fe Opera and other houses. Now Figaro is taking the next step.

When the Wolf Trap Opera performs Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Filene Center at Wolf Trap, in Vienna, Va., on July 25, Figaro and its MobiTxt technology will be on hand. And apart from taking the technology to a bigger opera company, Figaro is offering an expanded form of its service -- but one that could raise hackles if it becomes widely used. This time, the libretto will be beamed not only to Google Glass, but also to cellphones, tablets and other devices that can connect to the Internet.

For many Americans, FIFA has long been a foreign-sounding jumble of letters rather than the organization behind the World Cup, the globe’s biggest sporting event. (Where is the “S” for soccer?)

Not any longer.

Helped by the unlikely advance of Team USA in Brazil, users from within the United States now make up 20 percent of FIFA’s total global audience across its digital platforms, making America the biggest footballing nation in audience size, according to early tallies by FIFA’s digital arm.

FIFA is set to release more detailed global data after the tournament’s final match on July 13. FIFA.com, the organization’s global site, available in six languages, logged some 30 million visitors from the United States between June 1 and 26, or about 23 percent of the global audience, FIFA said.

American users also account for almost a quarter of the 25 million downloads the FIFA World Cup App has logged on iOS and Android smartphones so far, making that app more popular in the United States than anywhere else.

Facebook offered up an apology to its users, after it came to light that the company had manipulated the news feeds of more than half a million people so it could change the number of positive and negative posts that appear from their friends.

This is hardly the first time Facebook has apologized for its behavior. Over its 10-year history, the company has repeatedly pushed its users to share more information, then publicly conceded it overstepped if an upset public pushed back.

In a backlash against the retail giant Amazon, France is preparing to impose new restrictions that would bar online merchants from offering free shipments of discounted books.

New legislation, designed to protect thousands of local bookstores, and nicknamed the anti-Amazon law, was passed by the French Senate. It will not formally take effect until after the president signs it.

But the state’s culture minister, Aurélie Filippetti, has already publicly backed the measure, which has drawn support from conservative and liberal politicians. The minister called the ban “a sign of the deep commitment of the nation to books.”

Aereo, the start-up firm that threatened to upend the television industry, has hit the pause button.

Three days after the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas and transmitting them to subscribers for a fee, the company suspended its service.

“We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps,” Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s chief executive, said.

Aereo said that the service would not be available after 11:30 a.m. on June 28 and that it would give users a refund for their last paid month. The company had fewer than 500,000 subscribers in about a dozen metropolitan areas.

The day after the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo in a copyright case brought by the nation’s major broadcasters, Mark Ely was trying to scoop up Aereo customers by promoting his start-up, Simple.TV, on social media.

“Former Aereo customer? Join the Simple.TV Family,” the company wrote on Twitter. “We’re telling Aereo customers: ‘Your favorite service is going away. Here’s an idea that isn’t,’ ” Ely, who started his company in 2011, said.

The television establishment still has much to worry about after its Supreme Court victory over Aereo, the digital start-up that had threatened to upend the economics of the media business. “Television is a castle filled with money,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the Publicis Groupe’s digital marketing unit. “People are trying to get into that castle and take some money.”

Eager for a piece of the $167 billion American television market, dozens of companies are offering options for the growing number of viewers known as cord cutters, who are canceling their traditional pay-television subscriptions. The providers range from Hulu, which the broadcasters own, to bigger services like Amazon, Google and Netflix, all of which offer cheaper streaming alternatives.