Platforms

Facebook corporate parent Meta has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social network service allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in court documents filed Aug 26. The filing in San Francisco federal court requested a 60-day stay of the action while lawyers finalize the settlement. That timeline suggested further details could be disclosed by late October.

Meta Platforms signed a $37.5 million class settlement with Facebook users who say the platform continued tracking their locations after they turned off location services on their devices, according to a filing in San Francisco federal court. The settlement by the US District Court for the Northern District of California covered about 70 million US residents who used Facebook between Jan. 30, 2015 and April 18, 2018 and who turned off the location services setting for the Facebook application on their iOS or Android devices.

Cox Communications parent company Cox Enterprises inked a deal to acquire well-known news outlet Axios for more than half a billion dollars, in a move the former pitched as part of an effort to diversify its business. As part of the transaction, Cox Enterprises CEO Alex Taylor will join Axios’ board. Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz will lead editorial operations and retain “substantial stakes” in the company.

Two dozen Texas cities have sued streaming giants Netflix, Hulu and Disney Direct-to-Consumer for not paying what the municipalities said are the millions in franchise fees that the streaming services owe them. A favorable decision could lead to millions more from other cities seeking more funds for municipal services. The cities are alleging that the streamers should be paying annual franchise fees back to 2007, as they said is required by the Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA). Those are the fees that cable/broadband operators provide that go toward city services.

Broadband providers are telling the Federal Communications Commission in no uncertain terms to reject calls by cable programmer Fuse Media and public advocacy groups to mandate that those providers collect data on the diversity of the video content vendors they buy programming from, including for their owned or affiliated streaming services which, they point out, are not regulated by the FCC.

Since 2020, misinformation and disinformation related to election and voter suppression have continued to spread at a growing rate across online platforms. While internet platforms ramped up attempts to combat such information during the 2020 elections, many of these efforts appear to have been temporary measures. In anticipation of the 2022 US midterm elections, this report evaluates how online platforms are combating misleading election information against a selection of recommendations made by the Open Technology Institute in 2020.

Washington’s political power brokers are quietly inching toward a full embrace of influencers. If not handled with care, however, that can be hazardous—particularly when the arrangement is unmasked. Urban Legend, a small ad-tech startup operating out of a loft in Alexandria (VA), pledges on its website to “help brands run accountable and impactful influencer campaigns.” Launched in 2020 by a pair of former Trump administration staffers, its more comprehensive mission, one rarely articulated in public, is slightly more ambitious.

Amazon has proposed concessions to settle two antitrust cases against it in the European Union, a fresh sign of changing strategy from big tech companies after the bloc passed a strict new digital-competition law. The US-based online retailer offered a pledge not to use nonpublic data about sellers on its marketplace, after the EU accused Amazon of violating competition law by using nonpublic information from merchants to compete against them. The European Commission, the bloc’s top competition regulator, said it was seeking feedback on commitments offered by Amazon to settle the cases.

On July 5, European Parliament held the final vote on the new Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, following a deal reached between Parliament and Council on 23 April and 24 March respectively. The two bills aim to address the societal and economic effects of the tech industry by setting clear standards for how they operate and provide services in the EU, in line with the EU’s fundamental rights and values.

The Supreme Court’s latest climate change ruling could dampen efforts by federal agencies to rein in the tech industry, which went largely unregulated for decades as the government tried to catch up to changes wrought by the internet. In the 6-3 decision that was narrowly tailored to the Environmental Protection Agency, the court ruled that the EPA does not have broad authority to reduce power plant emissions that contribute to global warming. The precedent is widely expected to invite challenges of other rules set by government agencies.