Digital Content

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card? Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet. Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google.

In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit. But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company’s monitoring of the rental market. Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

[Commentary] No matter what the Federal Communications Commission does, America's internet is not an equal place and it's only going to become less fair. The reality is big companies do have a privileged path into people's digital lives. They have the money and the technical ability to make sure their websites and internet videos speed through internet pipes without delays or hiccups. Web services from big companies such as Netflix and Google account for the majority of internet use during peak evening hours in North America. And even though Google doesn't need to pay AT&T or Verizon Co

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chariman of Alphabet, says the company is working to ferret out Russian propaganda from Google News after facing criticism that Kremlin-owned media sites had been given plum placement on the search giant’s news and advertising platforms.  “We’re well aware of this one, and we’re working on detecting this kind of scenario you’re describing and deranking those kinds of sites,” Schmidt said, after being asked why the world’s largest search company continued to classify the Russian sites as news. Schmidt name-checked two state-owned enterprises.

If you have the uncomfortable sense someone is looking over your shoulder as you surf the Web, you're not being paranoid.

• While broadband network speeds have improved substantially over the last decade, the web’s performance has stagnated from the end user point of view. 
• The disconnect between broadband and web speeds suggests that the “virtuous circle” hypothesis created by the Federal Communication Commission to justify common carrier internet regulation is false.
• A system for capturing passive measurements and sharing them among internet service providers, web developers, and other responsible parties may be useful for accelerating the web experience.

AT&T’s former Mobility Chief Glenn Lurie says the wireless pure-play is on its way out. “I do think, long term, you’re going to see less single-play players and more double- and triple-play players, and more bundling. Because without question the customer expectation is going to change, and it is changing. Their expectation is around having everything on their device, having their video on the device, being able to do the things around social on the device. So, I just think that for carriers to continue to grow, they’re going to have to diversify.

The economic strains of technology on the entire media landscape are intensifying. Weeks after Google and Facebook announced record earnings, some of the biggest players in the digital media industry are still struggling to hit revenue projections, make profit or grow. Rapid consolidation in every sector, but especially digital, shows how difficult it is for media companies to survive in an attention economy dominated by tech platforms.

Google became the world’s go-to source of information by ranking billions of links from millions of sources. Now, for many queries, the company is presenting itself as the authority on truth by promoting a single search result as the answer. The promoted answers, called featured snippets, are outlined in boxes above other results and presented in larger type, often with images. Google’s voice assistant sometimes reads them aloud.

My country, Serbia, has become an unwilling laboratory for Facebook’s experiments on user behavior — and the independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization where I am the editor in chief is one of the unfortunate lab rats. Facebook allowed us to bypass mainstream channels and bring our stories to hundreds of thousands of readers. But now, even as the social network claims to be cracking down on “fake news,” it is on the verge of ruining us. That’s why Mark Zuckerberg’s arbitrary experiments are so dangerous.