Digital Content

If you have autoplay enabled on your Netflix or Amazon Prime account, listen up: it could cost you hundreds of dollars a year if you’re not careful. ew services like Disney+ offer us unfettered access to most of the gems of the Disney vault, along with Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and 20th Century Fox, with the expectation that we'll watch them for hours.

The New York Times recently published a series of articles under the title, “So the Internet Didn’t Turn Out as We Hoped. Where Do We Go from Here?” I read the series with interest, as the Times turned a critical eye toward the internet as it currently is and its likely future.

Cyber Monday — with a predicted $9 billion in US sales online — has become a self-sustaining phenomenon in the world of e-retail, with email blasts and ad blitzes pushing pre-holiday season discounts. This event did not emerge organically. It's a marketing construct built around a discredited prefix that was originally coined for an invented science. Back in 2005, data showed online sales spiking the Monday after Thanksgiving.

A new movement toward public service digital media may be what we need to counter the excesses and failures of today’s internet. A public service Web invites us to imagine services that don’t exist now, because they are not commercially viable, but perhaps should exist for our benefit, for the benefit of citizens in a democracy. Digital public service media would fill a black hole of misinformation with educational material and legitimate news.

Twitter will no longer allow certain types of geographic or keyword targeting for advertisers promoting any type of cause, as part of rules aimed at blocking most political-related ads on its platform. Geotargeting isn’t allowed at the ZIP Code level nor are advertisers allowed to target users by their political leanings or affiliations, as part of efforts to limit issues-based advertising. Twitter defines issues-based ads as those related to civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship or social-equity causes.

Google has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged. Those actions often come in response to pressure from businesses, outside interest groups and governments around the world. They have increased sharply since the 2016 election and the rise of online misinformation. Google’s evolving approach marks a shift from its founding philosophy of “organizing the world’s information,” to one that is far more active in deciding how that information should appear.

An international "grand committee" of lawmakers called for a pause on online micro-targeted political ads with false or misleading information until the area is regulated. The committee, formed to investigate disinformation, gathered in Dublin to hear evidence from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other experts about online harms, hate speech and electoral interference. The meeting was attended by lawmakers from Australia, Finland, Estonia, Georgia, Singapore, the UK and United States.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg oversaw plans to consolidate the social network's power and control competitors by treating its users' data as a bargaining chip. Zuckerberg, along with his board and management team, found ways to tap Facebook users' data — including information about friends, relationships and photos — as leverage over the companies it partnered with.

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that.