Digital Content

Facebook and Google introduced new privacy settings in order to comply with Europe’s sweeping new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, but campaigners still aren’t satisfied. Some official complaints on the day the new law went into force, and now others have raised further concerns about how the companies manipulate people into exposing their data.

Facebook's internal probe into potential misuse of user data is hitting fundamental roadblocks: The company can’t track where much of the data went after it left the platform or figure out where it is now.

Twitter and Facebook are scrambling to assuage conservative leaders who have sounded alarms — and sought to rile voters — with accusations that the country’s tech giants are censoring right-leaning posts, tweets and news. From secret dinners with conservative media elite to private meetings with the Republican National Committee, the new outreach reflects tech giants’ delicate task: satisfying a party in power while defending online platforms against attacks that threaten to undermine the public’s trust in the Web.

[Commentary]  We have handed to private companies the power to set and enforce the boundaries of appropriate public speech. That is an enormous cultural power to be held by so few, and it is largely wielded behind closed doors, making it difficult for outsiders to inspect or challenge.

When people think about the challenge that Facebook and Twitter pose to our democracy, they don't often think about James Madison and the Federalist Papers. But perhaps they should, argues constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen. Rosen pointed to Madison's writings in No. 55 of the Federalist Papers in arguing against direct democracy. "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.

The US is putting up relatively meager competition in a potent new global tech race that, combined with the wave of go-it-alone nationalism led by President Donald Trump, is reshaping global politics and may lead to war, according to a major new report.  In the late 1950s, the US, facing a similar momentous challenge in Sputnik, threw all its resources into a single-minded effort to dominate the future.

In a test of antitrust law, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that American Express could use contracts to stop merchants from steering consumers to other cards. The decision has implications not only for what one brief called “an astronomical number of retail transactions” but also for other kinds of markets, notably ones on the internet, in which services link consumers and businesses. Such “two-sided platforms,” the Court said, require special and seemingly more forgiving antitrust scrutiny.

Facebook announced an expansion of several initiatives to combat the spread of misinformation on the social network used by more than 2 billion people. Facebook acknowledged that fake news reports and doctored content have increasingly become image-based in some countries, making it harder for readers to discern whether a photo or video related to a news event is authentic. The company said it has expanded its fact-checking of traditional links posted on Facebook to photos and videos.

Since the 2016 US presidential election, much attention has been focused on the role of bots in promoting political news on Twitter. But bots can play a role in spreading many other types of news and information as well. This study finds that suspected bots are far more active in sharing links to news sites focusing on nonpolitical content than to sites with a political focus. Some findings:

Internet retailers can be required to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision. Brick-and-mortar businesses have long complained that they are disadvantaged by having to charge sales taxes while many of their online competitors do not. States have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that helped spur the rise of internet shopping. On June 21, the court overruled that ruling, Quill Corporation v.