Digital Content

Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google "Search Liaison" Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature "was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved.

Senators of both parties are focusing their criticism on a law that Congress passed in 1996—a law that paved the way for social media as we know it. That law, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), “needs to change.” The statute in question is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives online service providers broad immunity from lawsuits over their users’ posts, with the goal of promoting free expression online. Over the years, it has survived court challenges, legislative pushes, and an executive order by President Donald Trump. Now, it is in Congress’s sights once again.

CEO's from Meta, Snap, X, TikTok, and Discord testified in a contentious and emotional Senate hearing on child online safety. Lawmakers invoked the stories of online child abuse victims—many of whom sat directly behind the tech leaders—to issue a stunning rebuke to Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

There's one thing uniting big and small tech companies operating in Europe: they can't stand Apple's approach to complying with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA designates six big tech companies as online gatekeepers—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft—and obligates them to open their platforms to competition. Apple's DMA compliance plan allows developers to set up alternative app stores and avoid Apple's in-app payment system.

Social media platforms faced a range of controversies in recent years, including concerns over misinformation and data privacy. Even so, US adults use a wide range of sites and apps, especially YouTube and Facebook. And TikTok – which some Congress members previously called to ban – saw growth in its user base. According to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,733 U.S. adults conducted May 19-Sept. 5, 2023:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is exploring internal use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make its work for Congress and taxpayers more efficient, in-depth, and effective. By developing these tools, GAO is also gaining insight into the benefits and risks of AI, which will help GAO evaluate other agencies' use and better provide technical assistance to Congress. As of January 2024, GAO is exploring the following eight AI use cases:

Rural broadband is getting a big boost from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, but rural broadband could also get a boost from the AI-fueled data center boom — even if we don't usually think of AI and rural at the same time. Public cloud providers need fiber to connect a growing number of data centers in places like Council Bluffs, Iowa, Virginia’s Prince William County, and Midlothian, Texas. “Anywhere you build a new data center will drive incremental network construction by at least three providers,” said Frank Louthan, equity analyst and managing director at Ray

The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified letter by the agency. The letter offered few details about the nature of the data other than to stress that it did not include the content of internet communications.

Since Apple introduced the App Store in 2008, it has tightly controlled the apps and services allowed on iPhones and iPads, giving the company an iron grip on one of the digital economy’s most valuable storefronts. Now Apple is weakening its hold on the store, in one of the most consequential signs to date of how new European regulations are changing consumer technology.

The US National Science Foundation and collaborating agencies launched the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, a first step towards realizing the vision for a shared research infrastructure that will strengthen and democratize access to critical resources necessary to power responsible AI discovery and innovation. Partnering with 10 other federal agencies as well as 25 private sector, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, the NAIRR pilot will provide access to advanced computing, datasets, models, software, training and user support to U.S.-based researche