Labor

Facebook employees are calling for a crackdown on suspected leakers and questioning whether “spies” have infiltrated the corporation, according to leaked internal posts that suggest the social media giant’s workforce is becoming defensive in the face of critical public scrutiny. The posts were a response to the leak of a memo by a senior Facebook executive who defended the social network’s negative effects on society.

“Desigend by Apple in California. Assembled in China”. For the past decade the words embossed on the back of iPhones have served as shorthand for the technological bargain between the world’s two biggest economies: America supplies the brains and China the brawn. Not any more. China’s world-class tech giants, Alibaba and Tencent, have market values of around $500 billion, rivalling Facebook’s. China has the largest online-payments market. Its equipment is being exported across the world. It has the fastest supercomputer.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released, for the first time, preliminary statistics and an accompanying report exploring the size and growth of the digital economy. Goods and services that are primarily digital accounted for 6.5 percent of the US economy, or $1.2 trillion, in 2016, after a decade of growing faster than the US economy overall, BEA’s research shows. 

Verizon and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have reached a settlement requiring the telco to repair and make improvements to its copper network infrastructure throughout New York state. Under the terms of the agreement, the service provider agreed to repair 54 central offices across the state; replace bad cable, defective equipment and faulty backup batteries; and take down 64,000 double telephone poles.

The Women Media Center’s annual examination found that, at 20 of the nation’s top news outlets, men produced 62.3 percent of news reports analyzed during a studied period while women produced 37.7 percent of news reports. That WMC “Divided 2017” analysis showed hardly any progress since the WMC’s previous “Divided” report, when women produced 37.3 percent of news.

US negotiators will push for a series of protectionist measures at negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement the week of Feb 26. The Rust Belt needs a better connection to the rest of the world. To make it in the digital economy, the first step is to plug in. Nearly 40 percent of residents in the rural US remain without access to broadband.

It is great to be joined by the innovators, educators, and advocates on the roundtable—all of whom are focused on developing a strong tech workforce here in Mississippi. I welcome the chance to participate in today’s event and learn from their perspectives.  When I think about broadband, I think about the jobs and opportunities it creates for millions of Americans around the country. It’s one of the reasons I’m focused in my role at the FCC on policies that will promote broadband deployment.

A coalition of top public broadcast organizations formally withdrew a recommendation that the Federal Communications Commission ease equal employment opportunity requirements for public stations. America’s Public Television Stations, National Public Radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service recommended the review in a joint response to the commission’s request for comments on its agenda to modernize media regulations. After supporters of the EEO rules objected last week, the organizations formally withdrew it.