Digital Content

Facebook is defining what it considers "issue ads" through an initial list of ad topics, ranging from abortion to guns, that will require authorization and labeling on its platform in the US. Facebook's initial list of what it considers an "issue ad": Abortion, budget, civil rights, crime, economy, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, government reform, guns, health, immigration, infrastructure, military, poverty, social security, taxes, terrorism, and values. A list of topics is a good start, but there will inevitably be instances where there are discrepancies a

Social media platforms are using the same techniques as gambling firms to create psychological dependencies and ingrain their products in the lives of their users, experts warn. These methods are so effective they can activate similar mechanisms as cocaine in the brain, create psychological cravings and even invoke “phantom calls and notifications” where users sense the buzz of a smartphone, even when it isn’t really there.

First Lady Melania Trump said she would focus her official effort as first lady on teaching children to put kindness first in their lives, particularly on social media. She unveiled a program called “Be Best,” which she said would tackle opioid abuse, social media pressures and mental health issues among young people.

The Santa Clara Principles offer guidance to internet platforms on how to provide users with meaningful due process when their posts are taken down or their accounts are suspended, and to help ensure that the enforcement of company content guidelines is fair, unbiased, and respectful of users’ free expression rights. The three principles urge companies to:

• Publish the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended due to violations of their content guidelines;

Google is removing anonymized and encrypted user IDs from DoubleClick data transfer starting May 25, to align its data practices with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The changes apply to all companies using the DoubleClick ID feature. The data remains accessible to advertisers, but the move makes Google the gatekeeper of the data to prevent data sharing and requires advertisers to use its platforms and tools.

Facebook’s failure to compel Cambridge Analytica to delete all traces of data from its servers – including any “derivatives” – enabled the company to retain predictive models derived from millions of social media profiles throughout the US presidential election, the Guardian can reveal. Leaked emails reveal that when Cambridge Analytica told Facebook almost a year before the election that it had deleted data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users, it stopped short of agreeing to also erase derivatives of the data.

AT&T has been blocking the new Cloudflare DNS service, but AT&T says the blocking was unintentional and that it will fix the problem soon. The blocking is affecting AT&T home Internet customers who use an AT&T gateway. "With the recent launch of Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service, we have discovered an unintentional gateway IP address conflict with 1 of their 4 useable IPs and are working to resolve the issue," said AT&T. Most of AT&T's customers should be able to access Cloudflare DNS using the alternate 1.0.0.1 address.

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission commissioners expressing concern that Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree with the Commission.

[Commentary] The Senate may soon be voting on net neutrality. The net neutrality debate is driven in part by the fact that Internet service providers (ISPs) have the technical ability and financial incentive to act as gatekeepers, picking winners and losers in the Internet marketplace. Perhaps an ISP will favor a particular airline reservation website or an online newspaper by blocking access to its competitors, or simply by making access to competitors’ content painfully slow.

For the last decade or so, China has defied the truism that only free and open societies can innovate. Even as the Communist Party has kept an iron grip on politics and discourse, the country’s technology industry has grown to rival Silicon Valley’s in sophistication and ambition. President Xi Jinping’s tilt toward strongman rule could put all that to the test. As Mr.