Digital Content

Accusations that Google has tampered with search results are not uncommon and date back to the earliest days of its search engine. But they are taking on new life amid concerns that technology behemoths are directly — or indirectly — censoring controversial subjects in their response to concerns over so-called fake news and the 2016 presidential election.

In April, Google announced an initiative called Project Owl to provide “algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content” and stamp out fake news stories from its search results. To some, that was an uncomfortable step toward Google becoming an arbiter of what is and is not a trustworthy news source. “They’re really skating on thin ice,” said Michael Bertini, a search strategist at iQuanti, a digital marketing agency. “They’re controlling what users see. If Google is controlling what they deem to be fake news, I think that’s bias.”

The Department of Homeland Security has moved to collect social media information on all immigrants, including permanent residents and naturalized citizens. A new rule published in the Federal Register the week of Sept 18 calls to include "social media handles and aliases, associated identifiable information and search results" in the department's immigrant files. The new rule could also affect US citizens who communicate with immigrants on social media by making their conversations the subject of government surveillance.

Homeland Security's inspector general published a report earlier in 2016 concluding that DHS pilot programs for using social media to screen immigration applicants "lack criteria for measuring performance to ensure they meet their objectives." "Although the pilots include some objectives, such as determining the effectiveness of an automated search tool and assessing data collection and dissemination procedures, it is not clear DHS is measuring and evaluating the pilots’ results to determine how well they are performing against set criteria," the report reads.

Officials at the Federal Election Commission are reaching out to political ad buyers, among others, to solicit more comments about potential new disclosure rules. At this point, most of the FEC's efforts are around gathering ideas about ways to modernize outdated disclosure laws. Within the FEC and on Capitol Hill, a few other ideas expected to be considered (they're still very far off from actual implementation): Requiring all online political ads to carry disclosures; Creating a database of all political ads; Banning programmatic (automated) political ads from being sold. It will be hard for the six-person commission, usually divided equally among party lines, to come to a consensus around this, according to sources within the FEC, meaning that any major disclosure efforts would have to come from Congress.

Twitter is defending its decision not to suspend President Donald Trump over a tweet about North Korea that seems to violate its prohibition on threats of violence.

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N.," President Trump tweeted. "If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!" Twitter did not remove the tweet. North Korea interpreted the tweet as a "clear declaration of war." Responding to questions from users on why it had not removed the tweet and suspended the president's account, Twitter said "'newsworthiness' and whether a tweet is of public interest" plays a role in its decision making. Twitter said this is an internal policy.

Its public terms of service state: "You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism." Twitter acknowledged it needs to do a better job of making its rules transparent to the public. "We'll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it," Twitter said.

At least six of President Trump’s closest advisers occasionally used private email addresses to discuss White House matters, current and former officials said.

Stephen Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, advisers, Gary Cohn and Stephen Miller, and Ivanka Trump have all used personal email accounts to conduct government business. Officials are supposed to use government emails for their official duties so their conversations are available to the public and those conducting oversight. But it is not illegal for White House officials to use private email accounts as long as they forward work-related messages to their work accounts so they can be preserved.

[Commentary] When it comes to business, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is undeniably a visionary. But Zuckerberg’s prescient skills seem to waver when the social and cultural intricacies of the real world leak onto his ubiquitous platform. Defensive at times, like when he initially disputed the premise fake news on Facebook may have influenced the 2016 election, Zuckerberg can come across as someone yet to realize the true power and scope of the platform he built. A company optimized for digital engagement, it turns out, may not have been primed to deal with the darkest aspects of humanity and society. Whether Facebook’s public problems are evidence of unintended consequences, shortsightedness or willful blindness is open to debate. But pressure on the company to get policy (and its algorithms) right will only mount now that it counts a quarter of the world’s population as its users, effectively turning the platform into a digital reflection of society.

Nine days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as “crazy” the idea that fake news on his company’s social network played a key role in the US election, President Barack Obama pulled the youthful tech billionaire aside and delivered what he hoped would be a wake-up call.

For months leading up to the vote, President Obama and his top aides quietly agonized over how to respond to Russia’s brazen intervention on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign without making matters worse. Weeks after Trump’s surprise victory, some of Obama’s aides looked back with regret and wished they had done more. Now huddled in a private room on the sidelines of a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, two months before Trump’s inauguration, President Obama made a personal appeal to Zuckerberg to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously. Unless Facebook and the government did more to address the threat, President Obama warned, it would only get worse in the next presidential race. Zuckerberg acknowledged the problem posed by fake news. But he told President Obama that those messages weren’t widespread on Facebook and that there was no easy remedy.

Here are the five biggest issues causing lawmakers to look at the technology industry in a new, harsher light: The Russia investigation, A new antitrust movement, Culture wars, Sex trafficking, and Advertising algorithms.

Public Knowledge filed an amicus curiae brief in the case ASTM v. Public Resource. The case concerns Public Resource’s copying of model building codes and educational testing codes, which had been enacted into federal law and regulations. The standards organizations sued Public Resource for copyright infringement based on the copying of those legally-enforceable codes. The case is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is expected to be argued next year. The amicus brief, filed on behalf of a coalition of 62 organizations, companies, former government officials, librarians, innovators, and professors of law, asks the appeals court to permit Public Resource’s copying of the text of model codes enacted into law and not find it to be a copyright infringement.

The Majority of America's largest newspapers continue to employ digital subscription strategies that prioritize traffic, ad revenues, and promotion—despite the ongoing collapse of display ad rates. Even as they’ve added paying Web subscribers by the hundreds of thousands, daily newspapers have decisively rejected an all-in approach featuring “hard” website paywalls that mimic their print business models. Instead, most are employing either “leaky” paywalls with unlimited “side doors” for non-subscribers or no paywalls at all, according to a CJR analysis of the nation’s 25 most-visited daily newspaper sites.