Ownership

Facebook cut references to Russia from a public report in April about manipulation of its platform around the presidential election because of concerns among the company’s lawyers and members of its policy team, apparently. The drafting of the report sparked internal debate over how much information to disclose about Russian mischief on Facebook and its efforts to affect U.S. public opinion during the 2016 presidential contest.

Some at Facebook pushed to not include a mention of Russia in the report because the company’s understanding of Russian activity was too speculative, apparently. Ultimately, the 13-page report, published on April 27 and titled “Information Operations and Facebook,” was shortened by several pages by Facebook’s legal and policy teams from an earlier draft, and didn’t mention Russia at all. Rather, it concluded that “malicious actors” engaged in influence campaigns during the U.S. presidential election but said it couldn’t determine who was responsible. The extent of Facebook’s understanding at the time of Russian influence is unclear. It wasn’t until a Sept. 6 Facebook newsroom blog post that the company publicly identified Russia as a source of such efforts.

There is a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called “attention economy”: an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy. These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. Instead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers and product managers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves.

There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. But those concerns are trivial compared with the devastating impact upon the political system that some of Rosenstein’s peers believe can be attributed to the rise of social media and the attention-based market that drives it. Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, they contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.

Sinclair has told the Federal Communications Commission it is taking steps to spin off whatever stations it will need to comply with national or local ownership limits on its proposed $2.9 billion merger with Tribune, but that it is not identifying them pending possible Department of Justice input of FCC rule changes that could change the plan. If the FCC loosens its ownership rules that could also affect the plan, but Sinclair was focused on answering the FCC's questions about how the deal is currently being structured.

There are 10 markets where a combined Sinclair/Tribune would run afoul of FCC prohibitions on owning two stations in a market, and the deal, even with the UHF discount that means only half a UHF audience's station would count, would result in a 45%-plus national audience reach without some spinoffs-- and the current cap is 39%. Sinclair was responding formally to an FCC Media Bureau request that the broadcaster back up a number of its pledges to bring its proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune stations within the FCC's current media ownership rules, including the duopoly and national ownership cap, as well as Sinclair's explanation of the public interest benefits of the deal.

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville (VA) ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK. But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, e-mails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company. During that time, after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

YouTube recently surfaced videos peddling misinformation, hateful messages and conspiracy theories to users searching about mainstream news events—problems that caused the site to change its search results to promote more authoritative sources. In response to criticism of some search results on social media this week, YouTube is accelerating the rollout of planned changes to its search engine, apparently. On Oct 3 night, the company began promoting more authoritative sources in search results, especially for those about major news events. YouTube doesn’t disclose how it determines which sources are authoritative.

Public Knowledge, Consumer Federation of America, and New Networks Institute filed an amicus brief in the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit requesting the Court to overturn and remand the Federal Communications Commission’s recent Business Data Services deregulation Order. Public Knowledge argues that the agency’s competition analysis, which found that duopoly competition -- real or potential -- is “sufficient” to discipline market power and high prices in the BDS market, is ludicrous. The Commission’s analysis is inconsistent with competition law and unsupported by the record, and the Order will lead to higher prices in the BDS market, which consumers will ultimately pay.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the panel will develop a "stronger partnership" with social media companies in order identify foreign entities trying to sow division within the country. "We're going to have to have a much stronger partnership where the intelligence committee identifies Russian troll farms like the one here, they share that information with the social media companies so they can identify those accounts and take them down," Schiff said. rep Schiff said these companies have to be "good corporate citizens" and dedicate more time and resources to properly monitor the threat of outside agents taking advantage of the platforms to influence attitudes or events in the US.

Digiday published a story last week suggesting that many major publishers are shifting away from Facebook toward other social platforms to distribute their work. “Facebook loses attention as publishers shift focus to other platforms,” the headline announced. But if publishers are really going cold on Facebook, they have a funny way of showing it. Let’s take CNN, which Digiday reported was “de-emphasizing Facebook” in favor of other platforms.

Far from showing signs of de-emphasizing Facebook, this was the sixth month out of the last seven where the number of Facebook posts surpassed the number made in the previous month. Data collected from CrowdTangle (which is now owned by Facebook) indicates that CNN posted more in September to Facebook than any month in the last two years. If the newsroom resources being dedicated to Facebook are being reeled in, it isn’t reflected in the number of raw posts.

A sufficiently successful social platform is experienced, much like Uber, as a piece of infrastructure. Except, instead of wrapping its marketplace around a city’s roads, Facebook makes a new market around communication, media and civil society. This, from a founder’s perspective, is an electrifying outcome. But this cultural metastasis has led to a swift and less-than-discriminate backlash. Already, calls for regulating the largest internet platforms are growing louder while remaining tellingly vague. After all, what can a government realistically do about a problem like Facebook?