Digital Content

[Commentary] Journalists are facing the challenge of covering one of the most unusual and unreliable governments in modern history: President Donald Trump disseminates lies, twisted facts, and changes in policy in real time through his Twitter account. His advisors send contradictory messages on sensitive national topics and change policies at the last minute, surprising even Cabinet members. Federal data vanishes from the “thin cloud” on matters such as climate change and the environment. Despite—or perhaps because of—all of this, investigative journalism is flourishing and growing as it did during the Watergate days. However, this time, journalists are much better equipped for finding the truth independently, thanks to data and technology. The challenge for journalists is to thoroughly and selectively grasp the power of technology while upholding the profession’s core journalistic mission. To that end, the Columbia Journalism School is launching a Master of Science in Data Journalism that we hope will advance data journalism education and contribute to building the next generation of newsroom leaders.

[Giannina Segnini is director of the Master of Science in Data Journalism program at the Columbia Journalism School.]

Facebook is fighting misinformation with more information.

When Facebook’s US users come across popular links—including made-up news articles—in their feeds, they may also see a cluster of other articles on the same topic. The “related articles” feature, which will roll out widely in the US after months of testing, is part of Facebook’s strategy to limit the damage of false news without censoring those posts. The tweaks show Facebook’s efforts to reduce the presence of misinformation on its platform, without going so far as censoring it, a role it says it doesn’t want.

Verizon has a new rewards program out, called Verizon Up, which awards users a credit for every $300 they spend on their Verizon bill that can be redeemed toward various rewards. Customers will be able to get rewards such as “Device Dollars toward your next device purchase, discounts on an accessory, or partner rewards,” along with other surprise offerings and first-come, first-serve ticket opportunities, which all seems like a nice occasional thing to get for regularly paying your cellphone bill.

But, the new program comes with a pretty big catch: you have to enroll in Verizon Selects, a program that allows the company to track a huge chunk of your personal data. That includes web browsing, app usage, device location, service usage, demographic info, postal or email address, and your interests. Furthermore, that data gets shared with Verizon’s newly formed Oath combination (aka AOL and Yahoo), plus with “vendors and partners” who work with Verizon. Which is kind of a long list of people who have access to what feels like a fairly significant amount of your data.

Facebook wants you to read more articles on its mobile app. The company announced it will prioritize stories that load faster on a user's mobile News Feed. Stories that take longer to load could appear less. Up to 40% of website visitors leave a site after just a three-second delay, according to research from the Aberdeen Group. Facebook says the change is meant to improve the user experience, but there may be another motive here: Instant Articles. Facebook wants to host publisher stories on its own website, and one of the major benefits of hosting your content on Facebook is that it’s supposed to load faster. If load time will soon impact how many people see your post, publishers might be more inclined to use Instant Articles for fear that not doing so could hurt their distribution.

In making decisions about the limits of free speech, Facebook often fails the racial, religious and sexual minorities CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to protect. The 13-year-old social network is wrestling with the hardest questions it has ever faced as the de facto arbiter of speech for the third of the world’s population that now logs on each month. In February, amid mounting concerns over Facebook’s role in the spread of violent live videos and fake news, Zuckerberg said the platform had a responsibility to “mitigate the bad” effects of the service in a more dangerous and divisive political era. In June, he officially changed Facebook’s mission from connecting the world to community-building. The company says it now ­deletes about 288,000 hate-speech posts a month. But activists say that Facebook’s censorship standards are so unclear and biased that it is impossible to know what one can or cannot say.

The result: Minority groups say they are disproportionately censored when they use the ­social-media platform to call out racism or start dialogues. “Facebook is regulating more human speech than any government does now or ever has,” said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit group that researches the intersection of harmful online content and free speech. “They are like a de facto body of law, yet that law is a secret.”

President Donald Trump, your tweets are definitely being used against you in the court of law. The latest example is the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided that Democratic attorneys general for 16 states can launch a court battle to try to force the Trump Administration to keep paying Obamacare subsidies that help make insurance more affordable for millions of lower-income people. The judges said it makes sense for states to launch a court fight to keep Obamacare subsidies because Republicans who don't like these subsidies are in power and because President Trump has tweeted he'd like to get rid of them. The lawsuit, the judges said, is "timely in light of accumulating public statements by high-level officials.”

This is becoming a pattern: Judges, when deciding how to rule in politically sticky situations, pull up Twitter and see what the president has said about it. In June, a federal appeals court ruled not to reinstate the president's' travel ban because he failed to prove the travel ban is so necessary for public safety that it's okay for it to temporarily curtail people's liberties. The court cited one of the president's tweets.

Unlimited data plans are slowing down mobile speeds for Verizon and AT&T customers, according to data released by mobile network measurement company OpenSignal.

Verizon and AT&T reinstated their unlimited plans in February to compete with T-Mobile and Sprint, which have long offered unlimited data plans, and have since seen a deluge of demand. Greater data demand — either more data usage or more customers — means slower speeds. Think of it as increased traffic on a highway. Verizon and AT&T also have nearly double the subscribers of T-Mobile and Sprint, so changes in their offerings hit their networks harder. Carriers have long supported greater leeway to manage their networks as part of the US government’s fierce debate over net neutrality. T-Mobile’s unlimited plan often limits video streaming quality in a bid to ease the burden on its network; others like Verizon recently have tested similar tools to improve speeds. To staunch advocates of open internet rules, however, these techniques violate the spirit of federal safeguards meant to ensure all web traffic is treated equally. Both Verizon and AT&T saw a notable decline in speeds after introducing unlimited plans.

Sens introduced bipartisan legislation that would create a legal framework allowing law enforcement to access Americans' electronic communications in servers located in other countries. The International Communications Privacy Act from Sens Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chris Coons (D-DE) would also require law enforcement to notify other countries of such data collection on their citizens in accordance with their laws. The bill also allows law enforcement to get communications regarding foreign nationals in certain instances.

“The potential global reach of government warrant authority has significant implications for multinational businesses and their customers. Failing to address this issue in a reasonable, comprehensive way will only continue to cause problems between American businesses and the U.S. government,” Sen Hatch said. Tech companies offered quick praise for the bill after its release.

The likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google are about to go to war with the Congress over the most unlikely of causes: Human trafficking. A new bill by Sen Rob Portman (R-OH)— backed by 19 other lawmakers from both parties — would open the door for state attorneys general and victims alike to take legal action against social networks, review websites, advertisers and others that don’t do enough to combat users who post exploitative content. But the proposal is already drawing opposition from Silicon Valley, where tech companies want to put an end to human trafficking — but don’t want to do so in a way that also subjects them to new lawsuits.

The fight centers on a website for classified ads called Backpage, which investigators — in Congress and elsewhere — long have alleged is a haven for illegal prostitution and underage exploitation. For years, though, Backpage has dodged significant scrutiny with the help of a portion of federal law that generally spares website owners from being held liable for the third-party content posted by their users. The legal shield is known as Section 230, and it’s part of the Communications Decency Act. And for many in Silicon Valley, it’s something of a holy grail: They claim the 1996-era rules allowed the internet to evolve without fear of lawsuits. To that end, Sen Portman and his allies want to weaken that shield just a little bit, ensuring “that websites that facilitate sex trafficking can be held liable and that victims can get justice,” they said in a statement. Their proposal would give state attorneys general new power to prosecute offenders, while allowing victims to sue those websites — and potentially others, like the ad networks that support them.

Fifteen state attorneys general have teamed up with a pro-Hollywood group to launch a campaign aimed at dissuading the public from visiting file sharing sites. To be sure, it's true that ads and other content on piracy sites can infect unsuspecting visitors with malware. But these attorneys general, in conjunction the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), really want you to know that visiting pirate sites can ruin both your life and your family's life. The scary black-hooded hacker on their video messages says it all. "Hackers use pirate websites to infect your computer and steal your ID and financial information, or even take over your computer's camera without you knowing it," the top cops from the states say in the PSAs. The PSAs are appearing on social media, radio, and television this summer.