Politico

It’s not clear if a Donald Trump administration would approach tech and telecom policy the same way as conventional Republicans, but putting unknowns aside, a look at four issues where Trump could attempt to undo President Barack Obama’s tech legacy. 1) On the subject of network neutrality, a Trump Federal Communications Commission could try to repeal the Open Internet Order, but it would likely take a time-consuming notice-and-comment rulemaking process. 2) When it comes to internet governance, Trump has previously echoed Sen Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) opposition to the ICANN transition, which shifted the internet domain naming and numbering system to a nonprofit, from US government oversight. Trump might attempt to reverse the transition, but the options to do so are limited. 3) Regarding encryption, Trump has previously panned Apple’s stance versus the FBI and has the potential to appoint law enforcement heads who could more aggressively push the issue. 4) Media is another area where Trump could take a different tact, with an opportunity to “open up” libel laws and use the FCC to take action against outlets he disagrees with.

After Oct 20’s third and final presidential debate, on cable and network television, Donald Trump surrogates rushed to spin Trump’s assertion that he would not accept the results of the November election, and some cable television post-debate panels descended into screaming matches. But on Donald Trump’s Facebook page, which had already livestreamed a pre-debate show, followed by the debate itself for a little fewer than 200,000 concurrent viewers, and a post-debate program full of panels, pre-recorded bits and complete with anchors and all the other trappings of a news program, an alternate reality was being established.

Proclaiming itself an antidote to the “mainstream media” which Trump has said is guilty of tipping the scales of this election against Trump and the American people and in favor of a Clintonocracy, the nearly three hours of programming on Facebook cycled through Trump surrogates, family members and former Apprentice cast members, all of whom praised Trump endlessly. Right Side Broadcasting Network, a conservative online media network that live streams Trump rallies, filmed the pre- and post- debate show, on which the common refrain was: “The mainstream media is against us.” Another common refrain following Trump's debate performance: “By far his best debate. A clear and decisive victory.” Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, who served a a co-host along with Trump adviser Cliff Sims, declared it “the greatest Republican debate performance since Abraham Lincoln.”

A new letter to the Federal Trade Commission by Rep Hank Johnson (D-GA) and friends asks the agency to probe the “increasing difficulty that app developers have in reaching and communicating with customers in some app ecosystems.” But the note has a pretty clear target: the war between Apple and Spotify. The letter appears to side with Spotify, which has fiercely opposed Apple’s practice of collecting 30 percent of all new subscriptions to services that are sold through the Apple App Store. The two companies have clashed repeatedly over the issue since Apple began making plans to enter the music-streaming business — with Spotify arguing that Apple is acting anti-competitively.

The early contenders to run the Federal Communications Commission in a Hillary Clinton administration include longtime Clinton allies and donors, say sources close to the campaign.

Among the names are Susan Ness, a top Clinton fundraiser who previously served as an FCC commissioner under President Bill Clinton; Karen Kornbluh, an executive at audience measurement firm Nielsen who has deep Democratic Party ties; and Phil Verveer, an FCC official and longtime friend of the Clintons. Of course, it’s still early for a formal list, but that hasn’t stopped telecom types from coalescing around those perceived to be front-runners for a commission spot. Nearly everyone on the list is part of the Clinton campaign's network of tech advisers, which helped draft the Democratic nominee's tech policy platform.

What if the entire newspaper industry got it wrong? What if, in the mad dash two decades ago to repurpose and extend editorial content onto the Web, editors and publishers made a colossal business blunder that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars? What if the industry should have stuck with its strengths—the print editions where the vast majority of their readers still reside and where the overwhelming majority of advertising and subscription revenue come from—instead of chasing the online chimera?

That’s the contrarian conclusion I drew from a new paper written by H. Iris Chyi and Ori Tenenboim of the University of Texas and published this summer in Journalism Practice. Buttressed by copious mounds of data and a rigorous, sustained argument, the paper cracks open the watchworks of the newspaper industry to make a convincing case that the tech-heavy Web strategy pursued by most papers has been a bust. The key to the newspaper future might reside in its past and not in smartphones, iPads and VR. “Digital first,” the authors claim, has been a losing proposition for most newspapers. These findings matter because conventional newspapers, for all their shortcomings, remain the best source of information about the workings of our government, of industry, and of the major institutions that dominate our lives. They still publish a disproportionate amount of the accountability journalism available, a function that’s not being fully replaced by online newcomers or the nonprofit entities that have popped up. If we give up the print newspaper for dead, accepting its demise without a fight, we stand to lose one of the vital bulwarks that protect and sustain our culture.

Chatbots, one of the hottest trends in consumer technology, are invading the 2016 election, with Democrats and progressives deploying the artificial intelligence-powered software to do things like register voters and keep supporters engaged with Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Type a question or statement to an online chatbot, and it will attempt to respond like a human would. They can be pulled up with a few key strokes on popular services like Facebook Messenger or via SMS text. Though chatbot technology has existed for years, it's entering the mainstream thanks in part to products like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Echo, which have quickly taught people that having a conversation with a machine isn't all that strange. Now, some in politics are trying to harness the power of bots to influence the presidential election.

Donald Trump's presidential transition team is turning to a crusader against regulation as it seeks to craft a strategy on issues like network neutrality and the future of the Federal Communications Commission, according to three sources familiar with the effort. The newly tapped aide, Jeffrey Eisenach, is a known commodity in Washington tech and telecom circles.

Dating back to his time as leader of the now-defunct Progress and Freedom Foundation, he's argued vigorously in favor of the FCC taking a hands-off approach to digital issues. While there in the 1990s, he also called for robust penalties against Microsoft during the US government's antitrust investigation of the software giant. In 2012 Eisenach arrived as a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and, in that role, he’s been an outspoken antagonist of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his policies. In his research and advocacy, often backed by tech and telecom interests, he's slammed the Obama administration's efforts on net neutrality, broadband investment and more. It also marks a shift for Eisenach, who earlier this election cycle had criticized Trump. In March, he tweeted that he wouldn’t “apologize for pulling out all stops to defeat Trump,” citing the stakes in the election. But that tweet, and others critical of the GOP candidate, have since been deleted from his timeline. He's also been the source of controversy: The New York Times in August needled Eisenach for his research and writing on issues like net neutrality, some of which has been funded by companies like Verizon and other telecom interests that oppose the FCC's rules.

Hillary Clinton comes across in the FBI interviews as a disengaged tech user who sees the communication tools as little more than a means to an end. She has, according to multiple aides, never even learned how to use a desktop computer. Clinton regularly pumped those around her for help with her devices—even those, as her long-time aide Philippe Reines joked to the FBI, whose job had “zero percent” of their responsibilities focused on IT. Reines, whose name is redacted in the FBI files but whose identity is easily discernible, “likened it to your parents asking for technical help with their phone or computer.” Except that what Clinton turned to others for help with wasn’t an Amazon purchase or reading CNN.com: She needed help managing a massive trove of communications about the inner workings of the nation’s diplomacy and national security.

Over the course of five years, those emails lived first in her Chappaqua, New York, basement, then later in a data center in New Jersey, then they were FedExed across the country and possibly copied onto a thumb drive before being printed out, sorted and handed back to the State Department in 12 bankers’ boxes. The boxes soon found themselves at the center of an FBI investigation and led ultimately to the biggest controversy to shadow Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. But it all started with the strange home server.

This is its story.

Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research sent a memo to staff reminding employees that unscientific online polls, which were cited in several segments to suggest that Donald Trump won Sept 26’s presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, do not meet the network’s editorial standards.

"As most of the publications themselves clearly state, the sample obviously can’t be representative of the electorate because they only reflect the views of those Internet users who have chosen to participate," Dana Blanton, Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research, wrote in the memo to the channel's politics team. "Another problem — we know some campaigns/groups of supporters encourage people to vote in online polls and flood the results," she wrote. "These quickie click items do not meet our editorial standards." "News networks and other organizations go to great effort and rigor to conduct scientific polls — for good reason," Blanton added in the memo. "They know quick vote items posted on the web are nonsense, not true measures of public opinion."

Get ready to hear a lot about the “uberfication” of user-generated content. Yes, it’s a mouthful. But it’s also the next big thing. Fresco News, a two-year-old New York start-up, sees itself becoming a hot property as it cracks the code on local amateur content generation. I first wrote about Fresco [“The Uberfication of news”] as Tronc impresario (and chairman) Michael Ferro sought to buy the company in July, amid a frenzy of efforts to find lots of cheap-to-produce content to Tronc, the websites of the newspapers owned by the company formerly known as Tribune Publishing. Tronc’s effort to buy Fresco seems unlikely to succeed, as this hot company – several sources tell me – finds itself well-courted by more stable buyers. Both 21st Century Fox and AOL have shown buying interest as well as Tronc, confidential sources say.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see even greater interest given the priority many news companies, both legacy and start-up, have been lately giving to ad-friendly, video-delivered news. Still, it appears more likely that Fresco will remain an independent company, at least for now. Simply, Fresco News now enables local TV stations to assign, receive and quickly get on air and online lots of amateur-shot newsy videos in their metro area. Its secret sauce: Uberizing the supply chain process from station assignment to Fresco “qualified” shooter to shooting smartphone video to uploading and optimizing its quality for quick delivery to consumers, online or on the air.