Digital Content

Primal instincts often drive our obsession with stressful news, and social-media platforms are designed to keep us hooked. “These algorithms are designed to take and amplify whatever emotions will keep us watching, especially negative emotions. And that can have a real negative impact on people’s mental health,” says David Jay of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit addressing how social-media platforms hijack our attention.

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will review its content policies after facing widespread backlash, including from its own employees, over the decision to leave up controversial posts from President Donald Trump. Facebook will look at improving content policies while also building products to advance racial justice, the CEO said in response to the protests in the United States. 

Facebook removed two networks of accounts linked to white supremacy groups, but hasn’t seen any attempted foreign interference on its platforms related to the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the US targeting police brutality. Attorney General William Barr said that the US government has seen evidence of “foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.” But Facebook officials said  they haven’t detected foreign influence on the social network.

For the last few months, some people who bought a new smartphone in Europe with Google’s Android software were presented with an extra option while setting up the device: choosing a search engine other than Google. This so-called choice menu started appearing on new smartphones and tablet computers running Google software after March, part of an effort by the internet giant to address a 2018 ruling from European authorities that the company had abused its dominance in smartphone software to unfairly give an advantage to its search engine.

Social media companies are finally beginning to take action on posts from world leaders that violate their policies, after years of letting them mostly say whatever they wanted unfiltered to millions of people. Government officials are among the users most likely to abuse the wide reach and minimal regulation of tech platforms. Mounting pressure to stop harmful content from spreading amid the coronavirus pandemic, racial protests and a looming U.S.

Sens Edward Markey (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson regarding reports that AT&T has a policy of not counting use of HBO Max, a streaming service that the company owns, against AT&T customers’ data caps. Before the Federal Communications Commission acted in 2017 to undo net neutrality, the FCC had the authority to prohibit unjust, unreasonable and discriminatory practices by internet providers, including “zero-rating,” the term used to describe the practice of allowing users to access certain content without the requisit

AT&T has defended its decision to exclude HBO Max from counting against AT&T wireless subscribers’ data caps while competing streaming services don’t get the same treatment. The company said the move will save money for millions of consumers and that it’s not unlike what some of its competitors already do.

The European Commission launched a public consultation on the Digital Services Act, a landmark package announced by President von der Leyen in her political guidelines and in the Commission's Communication “Shaping Europe's Digital Future” of 19 February.

The Center for Democracy & Technology filed a lawsuit against President Trump’s “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship,” signed May 28, 2020. The suit argues that the Executive Order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals.