Digital Content

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.

Twitter and Facebook are staking out starkly different positions about how to handle political ads, but it is unclear how either approach will prevent the spread of misinformation. Some social-media websites have banned ads related to candidates, political parties and legislation. But blocking issues-based advertising, such as ads from advocacy groups or trade organizations, can be hard to enforce, tech executives and media buyers say.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Filter Bubble Transparency Act that would force large online platforms to be more transparent about how their algorithms find content to share. The bill would require companies that collect data from more than 1 million users and make more than $50 million per year to notify users that their platforms use algorithms to determine what information is shown and offer users the opportunity to opt-out of curated content.

Twitter will ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politi

World Wide Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned that the internet's power for good is being 'under threat'. The computer scientists spoke out on the Internet's 50th anniversary saying it has been 'subverted' by those spreading hatred and threatening democracy. He urged governments, campaign groups and individuals to back a new plan from his foundation to make the internet safe, fair and accessible to all.

Filmmakers have been critical of Netflix since it was reported that the straming service is testing a feature that would allow users to watch films or TV shows at up to 1.5 times faster than the original speed, as well as a .5 times slower option. Aaron Paul believes there is “no way” that Netflix would move forward with such a feature. "That would mean they are completely taking control of everyone else’s art and destroying it," Paul tweeted. 

The Federal Communications Commission adopted an Order granting Charter Communication’s Petition for Determination of Effective Competition, based on a finding that Charter is subject to effective competition from the AT&T TV NOW video streaming service in certain franchise areas in Hawaii and Massachusetts where Charter is currently subject to rate regulation.