Digital Content

After Charlottesville, Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right have become a lot less welcome on the web. So they’re building their own.

“Enough is enough,” read the Gab-makers’ Medium post from Aug. 10, two days before the Unite the Right rally. “The time is now for patriots and free thinkers inside and outside of Silicon Valley to organize, communicate in a safe way, and start building,” the post read, calling for the formation of a new group called the “Free Speech Tech Alliance,” which would build an alternative infrastructure where the alt-right wouldn’t be burdened by the social-justice priorities and liberal values of Silicon Valley—nor by the arguably monopolistic powers of the major nodes of the information economy, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and their peers. Gab, and a growing number of its compatriots in the “alt-tech” movement, want to build their own internet, one that can be a haven for hate.

Apple is breaking its silence on network neutrality, urging the Trump administration to preserve strong rules that prevent the likes of AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon from blocking or interfering with web traffic. In its new comments to the Federal Communications Commission, the iPhone maker specifically urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai not to roll back an existing ban against so-called “fast lanes,” which might allow broadband providers someday to charge for faster delivery of tech companies’ movies, music or other content. Apple doesn’t take an explicit position on the Title II legal issue at hand. Instead, Apple only shares its more general views about the need for net neutrality safeguards.

“Broadband providers should not block, throttle, or otherwise discriminate against lawful websites and services,” Apple said . “Far from new, this has been a foundational principle of the FCC’s approach to net neutrality for over a decade. Providers of online goods and services need assurance that they will be able to reliably reach their customers without interference from the underlying broadband provider.”

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s assault on journalistic integrity and shared verifiable facts has ignited a reaction among public intellectuals to demand fealty to scientific truth. Unfortunately, the reaction, like so many produced in the haste of political controversy, has oversimplified and overcorrected for the problem.

One common assumption within the resistance is that existing systems for regulating scientific claims are self-evidently wise. My new article, “Snake Oil“ (forthcoming in the Washington Law Review), is therefore coming out at a rather inconvenient time. I loathe the Trump administration’s disregard for and delegitimization of scientific institutions, including expert federal agencies. Nevertheless, the methods that some expert agencies use to constrain the information flow to consumers are highly flawed.

William Bradford, the man President Donald Trump has appointed to head an office under the Department of Energy, has blamed "cyber attacks and Internet crimes" for derogatory comments made against former President Barack Obama by an online user appearing to be Bradford. "I cannot comment on an ongoing federal investigation into multiple cyber attacks and Internet crimes committed against me over the past several years, to include e-mail intrusions, hacking and impostors in social media,” Bradford said. His statement comes after CNN’s KFile unearthed various comments from a user appearing to be Bradford on the comment-hosting platform Disqus. CNN’s research connected the account to Bradford via Google cache.

Google will comply with Europe’s demands to change the way it runs its shopping search service, a rare instance of the internet giant bowing to regulatory pressure to avoid more fines. The Alphabet Inc unit faced an Aug 29 deadline to tell the European Union how it planned to follow an order to stop discriminating against rival shopping search services in the region.

The EU fined Google a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in late June for breaking antitrust rules by skewing its general search results to unfairly favor its own shopping service over rival sites. The company had 60 days to propose how it would "stop its illegal content" and 90 days to make changes to how the company displays shopping results when users search for a product. Those changes need to be put in place by Sept. 28 to stave off a risk that the EU could fine the company 5 percent of daily revenue for each day it fails to comply. "The obligation to comply is fully Google’s responsibility," the European Commission said. The onus is on Google to find a solution that satisfies regulators, who’ve learned from past battles with Microsoft and Intel.

Smartphone apps account for half of all time spent with digital media, according to comScore's Mobile apps report, and two companies own the overwhelming majority of the most-trafficked apps: Google and Facebook. Overall, when it comes to time spent on mobile, 87% of mobile time spent is on apps vs. only 13% on mobile web, even though mobile web often receives higher traffic. Why it matters: Smartphone users spend 96% of their app time within their Top 10 most used apps and Smartphone users spend half their time on their #1 most used app, according to comScore. Google and Facebook own the overwhelming majority of traffic to these apps and are the #1 app for every age group.

[Commentary] Major telecommunications companies, like AT&T and Comcast, control the underlying network that powers the internet. Websites like Facebook and Twitter provide a powerful service on top of that network. But if those websites start censoring conversations or booting users, there's always room for a competing upstart. Don't like Google? Try Bing. However, because they control internet service itself, telecommunications have the ability to shut down the upstarts. It would be as if a power company could charge people more, or deny electricity service, based on its own arbitrary standards. Don't like it? You probably don't have much choice. Nearly half of all US households have only one option for wired broadband service.

In the 21st century, internet access has become another must-have utility. It should be regulated like one. Companies like Cloudfare can choose their users - that option shouldn't be available to Comcast or AT&T. The likes of Prince, Zuckerberg and Bezos need to have a public conversation about the role they play in fighting hate groups and protecting freedom of expression. Telecoms, on the other hand, just have to ensure the internet works.

Sonos has been rumored to be putting together a smart speaker for some time now, and we’ve just gotten the biggest confirmation yet that the company is working on its own voice assistant-powered device: a Federal Communications Commission filing that references a “Product model S13” that adds “integrated voice control functionality.” According to the FCC filing, S13 will have far-field microphones similar to those offered on products like the Amazon Echo to make it easy for the device to pick up and isolate sound from anywhere in a room. But Sonos isn’t just putting all its eggs in the Alexa basket — S13 will purportedly support “multiple voice platforms and music services,” and while details on that are obviously slim, it’s something that would immediately elevate it over its competitors by not locking you in to just one smart assistant ecosystem. Imagine it: a single smart speaker that supports Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. That’s what we might be looking at here.

Is the data you share publicly on social networking sites like an announcement in a public place, where speech and information gathering are protected under the First Amendment? Or is it more like something uttered on private real estate, where the owner can prohibit trespassers as they wish? That quandary recently emerged in a California courtroom, where two of the country’s most eminent constitutional lawyers squared off in a high-stakes battle between a data giant and a tiny startup.

The technology sector has been on edge, waiting to see if the new administration will make the reforms needed to spur innovation and startup activity, or whether it will make policy changes that end up stifling it. There are a few key areas of tech policy that are top of mind for tech CEOs and other industry participants, including four key issues: Expanding tech talent, intellectual property protection, artificial intelligence and automation, and network neutrality. Current Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is arguing to end internet service providers’ status as common carriers (on par with utilities), and instead “reestablish” market forces in regulating the internet. His view is that this would increase infrastructure investment and innovation among the aging broadband networks. This is not surprising, given President Trump’s view on this as a “top-down power grab,” drawing analogies to the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine.