House Opens Tech Antitrust Inquiry With Look at Threat to News Media

David Pitofsky, the general counsel for News Corp, left, and Kevin Riley, editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, were among the news media executives who testified at the hearing.

By Cecilia Kang

June 11, 2019

WASHINGTON — A congressional investigation into the power of big tech companies began on Tuesday with bipartisan concern from lawmakers that the government’s lax oversight of the industry may be doing more harm than good.

In its first hearing about the power held by Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, lawmakers focused on the decline of the news industry. They said they were troubled that the online digital advertising market, which is dominated by Google and Facebook, had siphoned off too much revenue from news organizations.

Consumer Groups Accuse Facebook of Duping Children. Image: The Federal Trade Commission has been asked to investigate whether Facebook violated consumer protection and child privacy laws by duping children into making in-app purchases in Angry Birds and other games. By Cecilia Kang Feb. 21, 2019

The Week in Tech: How Google and Facebook Spawned Surveillance Capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” says digital services like Google and Facebook claim private human behavior “as something to be bought and sold in the marketplace.” By Natasha Singer Jan. 18, 2019

Facebook creates Orwellian headache as news is labelled politics. by Emily Bell Archive of political content becomes battleground between publishers and platforms. Sun 24 Jun 2018. Facebook logo reflected in a person’s eye Should companies such as Facebook just rely far more heavily on human judgment or should they leave it to algorithms? George Orwell wrote in his essay Politics and the English Language: “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues.” When Facebook constructed a new archive of political advertising, had it thought a little more about this concept of what is “political”, it might have more accurately anticipated the subsequent Orwellian headache. As it is, journalists are finding their articles restricted from promotion because they are lumped in with campaigning materials from politicians, lobby groups and advocacy organisations.

Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code We might be tempted to call them ‘frankenalgos’ – though Mary Shelley couldn’t have made this up. The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands’ by Andrew Smith

How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature

This oversteps a boundary’: teenagers perturbed by Facebook surveillance News that Facebook shared teens’ details with advertisers throws focus on firm’s ability to mine the data of its 2 billion users – and raises serious ethical questions Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling ‘worthless’