Digital Content

The headlines are eye-catching. Melania Trump is leaving the White House! Home renovation cable star Joanna Gaines has abandoned her HGTV show and husband Chip Gaines! Televangelist Joel Osteen is leaving his wife! None of the stories were true. Yet as recently as late last week, they were being promoted with prominent ads served by Google on PolitiFact and Snopes, fact-checking sites created precisely to dispel such falsehoods.

The enticing headlines served as bait to draw readers to fraudulent sites that masqueraded as mainstream news sites, such as People and Vogue. The fake news ads all worked the same way: They would display headlines at the top of the fact-checking sites that, once clicked, took readers to sites that mimicked the logos and page designs of legitimate publications. The fake stories began with headlines and large photos of the celebrities in question, but after a few sentences, they transitioned into an ad for an anti-aging skin cream. The fake publishers used Google’s AdWords system to place the advertisements on websites that fit their broad parameters, though it’s unclear if they specifically targeted the fact-checking sites. But that Google’s systems were able to place fake news ads on websites dedicated to truth-squadding reflects how the internet search giant continues to be used to spread misinformation. The issue has been in the spotlight for many internet companies, with Facebook, Twitter and Google all under scrutiny for how their automated ad systems may have been harnessed by Russians to spread divisive, false and inflammatory messages.

[Commentary] Internet’s unique ability to personalize and to create virtual communities of interest accelerated the decline of newspapers and television business models and altered the flow of information in ways that we are still uncovering. “Media” now means digital and cable, cool mediums that require hot performance. Trust in all media, including traditional media, is at an all-time low, and we’re just now beginning to grapple with the threat to democracy posed by this erosion of trust.

At Knight Foundation, we have long supported efforts to strengthen trust in news. Given the heightened challenge we face, Knight is ramping up our funding of these efforts, and we recently formed a new panel, the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy, to explore the broader challenges facing journalism and its role in civic life.

[Alberto Ibargüen is the CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation]

[Commentary] Wikipedia, one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis. This has nothing to do with money. A couple of years ago, the site launched a panicky fundraising campaign, but ironically thanks to Donald Trump, Wikipedia has never been as wealthy or well-organized. American liberals, worried that Trump’s rise threatened the country’s foundational Enlightenment ideals, kicked in a significant flow of funds that has stabilized the nonprofit’s balance sheet.

That happy news masks a more concerning problem—a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors to the website. It is another troubling sign of a general trend around the world: The very idea of knowledge itself is in danger.

[Hossein Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian media analyst who was imprisoned in Iran from 2008 to 2014.]

For years, the United States and others saw China’s heavy-handed censorship as a sign of political vulnerability and a barrier to China’s economic development. But as countries in the West discuss potential internet restrictions and wring their hands over fake news, hacking and foreign meddling, some in China see a powerful affirmation of the country’s vision for the internet.

Few would argue that China’s internet control serves as a model for democratic societies. China squelches online dissent and imprisons many of those who practice it. It blocks foreign news and information, including the website of The New York Times, and promotes homegrown technology companies while banning global services like Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, China anticipated many of the questions now flummoxing governments from the United States to Germany to Indonesia. Where the Russians have turned the internet into a political weapon, China has used it as a shield. In fact, when it comes to technology, China has prospered. It has a booming technology culture. Its internet companies rival Facebook and Amazon in heft. To other countries, China may offer an enticing top-down model that suggests that technology can thrive even under the government’s thumb.

[Commentary] The president’s use of a public platform like Twitter to talk directly with the American people is unprecedented for the presidency, and it raises legal, ethical, and cultural issues that have never been tackled in American politics. The more outrageous President Donald Trump’s online comments have become, the more coverage they’ve received, creating a symbiotic relationship that has come to define Trump’s relationship with the media that covers him. But it has also boxed in a press corps that has come to simultaneously depend on and benefit from Trump’s Twitter torrent. Just because it’s being tweeted by the president, is it news?

In effect, Twitter has given Trump the illusion of transparency and accessibility without his having to actually provide them—or the accountability that usually comes with a two-way conversation with the press. It allows him to state untruths with impunity, knowing that his tweets will be widely redistributed by his followers and the media, and to dodge follow-up questions or criticism.

[Mathew Ingram is a former senior writer with Fortune magazine]

The Supreme Court accepted a second important case on digital privacy, agreeing to hear a dispute between the federal government and Microsoft about e-mails stored overseas.

The case began in 2013, when U.S. prosecutors got a warrant to access e-mails in a drug trafficking investigation. The data was stored on Microsoft servers in Ireland. Microsoft turned over information it had stored domestically but contended U.S. law enforcement couldn’t seize evidence held in another country. It said if forced to do so, it would lead to claims from other countries about data stored here. A judge upheld the warrant, but a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned the ruling. The full circuit then split evenly on whether that decision was correct. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to reverse the lower courts. It said the decision conflicts with past decisions in lower courts that “a domestic recipient of a subpoena is required to produce specified materials within the recipient’s control, even if the recipient stores the materials abroad.”

Tech journalists covering Facebook had a duty to cover what was happening before, during, and after the election. Reporters tried to see past their often liberal political orientations and the unprecedented actions of Donald Trump to see how 2016 was playing out on the internet. Every component of the chaotic digital campaign has been reported on, here at The Atlantic, and elsewhere: Facebook’s enormous distribution power for political information, rapacious partisanship reinforced by distinct media information spheres, the increasing scourge of “viral” hoaxes and other kinds of misinformation that could propagate through those networks, and the Russian information ops agency.

But no one delivered the synthesis that could have tied together all these disparate threads. It’s not that this hypothetical perfect story would have changed the outcome of the election. The real problem—for all political stripes—is understanding the set of conditions that led to Trump’s victory. The informational underpinnings of democracy have eroded, and no one has explained precisely how.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is looking into a data analytics company called Cambridge Analytica as part of its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Cambridge Analytica specializes in what’s called “psychographic” profiling, meaning they use data collected online to create personality profiles for voters. They then take that information and target individuals with specifically tailored content. Congressional investigators believe that Russian hackers might have received help in their efforts to distribute “fake news” and other forms of misinformation during the 2016 campaign. Hence the focus on Cambridge Analytica. So far there’s been a lot of speculation about the potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and most of the stories have orbited around the financial dealings of the Trump family and people like Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. But this story is specifically about how team Trump might have facilitated Russia’s meddling in the US presidential election. The stakes, in other words, are high.

[Commentary] The social-media overlords seem sincere when they describe their high-minded intentions. They talk much less, however, about the money they make from their users’ relinquishment of privacy. The willingness of those who make daily use of Google and social media sites to offer up their likes and dislikes, not to mention the details of their spending habits and internet wanderings, provides these companies with the personal data that is the holy grail of modern advertising. It also gives them an endless stream of free content to put those ads beside. Their users’ endless posts, spats and vacation pics make for the ultimate reality show. At times, social-media feeds are about as authentic as a standard reality show, too.

The New York Times presented new social media guidelines for its reporters in a memo that includes a warning to "not express partisan opinions" or "promote political views," among other rules. "In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation,” reads the memo from executive editor Dean Baquet. “Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively," he wrote.

"We consider all social media activity by our journalists to come under this policy. While you may think that your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, Snapchat or other social media accounts are private zones, separate from your role at The Times, in fact everything we post or 'like' online is to some degree public. And everything we do in public is likely to be associated with The Times," the memo warns.