Platforms

We’re announcing the expansion of a new local section on Facebook called “Today In” and starting a test for local alerts from relevant government pages. Today In connects people to local news and information about their community. It is now available in over 400 cities in the US, and we have launched our first international test in Australia. In addition, we have started testing Today In in communities located in news deserts, places that have low supply of local news and community information, by supplementing with relevant content from surrounding areas.

Officials from nine countries examining Facebook’s business practices have spent weeks trying to get the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to face questions at a hearing. Instead, Zuckerberg was represented by an empty chair. He skipped the session, which was organized by a British committee investigating Facebook and the spread of misinformation.

Bots spreading misinformation are using more sophisticated techniques, like going after specific human influencers and targeting misleading information within the first few seconds of it being posted, according to new studies.

More than 30 Google employees have joined a petition protesting the company’s plans to build a search engine that complies with China’s online censorship regime. An employee-led backlash against the project has been churning for months at the company, but Nov 27’s petition marks the first time workers at Google have used their names in a public document objecting to the plans. The existence of the project, code-named Dragonfly, was confirmed by chief executive Sundar Pichai in Oct.

On Nov 14, the New York Times detailed Facebook’s multi-pronged campaign to “delay, deny and deflect” efforts to hold the company accountable. This is far from the first time we’ve read disturbing accounts of Facebook’s unethical behavior, but this week the Times peeled back the curtain on the company’s crisis management techniques, public relations tactics, efforts to influence lawmakers, and aggressive lobbying. The peak at these practices helps explain why the social media giant has been so successful at avoiding meaningful regulation.

Both companies have long preferred to be vague on the details of their arrangement in which Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on its Safari internet browser. Some $4 billion a year is the most conservative view among analysts who have taken a stab at estimating these payments.

What does the Federal Trade Commission need to grapple with a force like Facebook?

The alliance between Democrats and Silicon Valley has buckled and bent amid revelations that platforms like Facebook and Twitter allowed hateful speech, Russian propaganda and conservative-leaning “fake news” to flourish. But those tensions burst into open warfare after revelations that Facebook executives had withheld evidence of Russian activity on the platform for far longer than previously disclosed, while employing a Republican-linked opposition research firm to discredit critics and the billionaire George Soros, a major Democratic Party patron.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) led a letter with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) to the Department of Justice urging Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to expand any investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to include whether Facebook—or any other entity affiliated with or hired by Facebook—hid information and retaliated against critics or public officials seeking to regulate the platform.