A new era of internet regulation is about to begin.
Years after Facebook and Google went public, regulators in the United States and abroad are finally taking a closer look at the internet behemoths. And they’re not only looking at the way these companies have come to dominate markets, but also examining the heart of the two firms’ business models. What they decide will have powerful implications for the way we do business on the internet.
Most people associate Facebook with cute family photos and think of Google like a semi-reliable encyclopedia. But these services have only a tangential relationship to the way either company actually makes money. The twin Silicon Valley titans rely on two closely intertwined technologies, customer surveillance and advertising, to maximize shareholder profits. The pair control 63 percent of the U.S. digital advertising market, and in 2016, they secured 99 percent of all digital advertising growth. That profit-making combo is exactly what regulators are focused on in 2018.
Many of the companies’ difficulties stem from the European Union’s tough new stance on privacy. The biggest threat to their business model comes from the General Data Protection Regulation, new data privacy rules set to go in effect in the EU in May. For the most part, Facebook and Google prevent you from using their products if you decline to agree to their entire terms of service. You cannot pick and choose what to agree to and still use their free services.
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Congress grilled representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google over their advertising and privacy practices in November 2017. (Pictured from left to right: Colin Stretch, Facebook general counsel, Sean Edgett, Twitter acting general counsel, and Richard Salgado, Google director of law enforcement and information security.)
The real Jessica Rychly is a Minnesota teenager with a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends. Occasionally, like many teenagers, she posts a duck-face selfie.
But on Twitter, there is a version of Jessica that none of her friends or family would recognize. While the two Jessicas share a name, photograph and whimsical bio — “I have issues” — the other Jessica promoted accounts hawking Canadian real estate investments, cryptocurrency and a radio station in Ghana. The fake Jessica followed or retweeted accounts using Arabic and Indonesian, languages the real Jessica does not speak. While she was a 17-year-old high school senior, her fake counterpart frequently promoted graphic pornography, retweeting accounts called Squirtamania and Porno Dan.
In a surprise reversal, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is withdrawing its plan to suspend environmental protections for an area of Alaska that is home to the world’s most valuable wild salmon fishery.
The EPA proposed last year to “reverse clean water safeguards” for the Bristol Bay watershed, paving the way for a massive gold and copper mine to be built in the region.
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The controversial proposal would have canceled an EPA protection put in place during the Obama administration. After years of study, the EPA found in 2014 that a mine “would result in complete loss of fish habitat” in some areas of the bay, and that “all of these losses would be irreversible.”
The Bristol Bay watershed is one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world, supplying about half of the world’s sockeye salmon.
Often close but never the closer in grand slams, Caroline Wozniacki finally got the job done. Her wait is over.
Wozniacki won her first grand slam title Saturday when she beat Simona Halep 7-6 (7-2) 3-6 6-4 in an eventful, absorbing Australian Open final that lasted nearly three hours in the draining Melbourne heat.
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Indeed the heat rule was implemented for the first time during the fortnight despite higher temperatures in week one. Both players took medical timeouts and a pair of games lasted longer than 10 minutes as the athleticism of the world’s two highest-ranked players was on show at Rod Laver Arena.
Billed as a blockbuster battle in the buildup, no one would dare say it disappointed.
It was hours after Donald Trump became the president-elect, and two FBI officials, like many of their fellow citizens, were flabbergasted. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ― both of whom had worked on the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, which the former secretary of state would blame for her loss ― were worried about the future of their country and their agency.
One text that Page sent Strzok early on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, has dominated the conservative media world this week, serving as a springboard for a Republican conspiracy theory suggesting that the nation’s premier law enforcement organization was plotting a coup against Trump within hours of his stunning victory.
“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing,” Page, a FBI lawyer, wrote in the text to Strzok from her FBI-issued phone. “Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”
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AFP via Getty Images
An FBI official bought calendars featuring “beefcake” photos of Vladimir Putin for the early Russia probe team.
One morning in 1998, US District Court Judge Walter Smith called a deputy clerk into his chambers in the Waco, Texas, courthouse and closed the door behind her.
“He basically came over to me and put his arms around me and kissed me, and I just froze. I couldn’t move,” the woman said in a deposition. “And he said, ‘Let me make love to you.’ And I just freaked out. … And then he pulled me to him again, and he kissed me again and stuck his tongue down my throat, and he pressed himself against me. … And then he started to try touch my breasts, and I kind of pushed away and said … ‘I need to go.'”
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The next day, Smith sent her a dozen yellow roses.
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In recent months, powerful men in Hollywood, the media, Congress and other spheres have been accused of sexual harassment. A common theme has been men abusing their positions in settings where women feel they have no recourse.
The American economy finished off last year on a firm footing, and is poised for more vigorous growth in the months to come.
Preliminary estimates released by the government on Friday showed that the nation’s output increased at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in the final quarter of 2017. Although that performance amounts to less than the heady 4 percent annual growth that President Trump has promised, it is further evidence — along with a sinking jobless rate and surging consumer confidence — of the economy’s resilience.
“The year-end is solid,” said Joel Prakken, chief United States economist at Macroeconomic Advisers by IHS Markit. Details within the report, about climbing business investment and depleted inventories, suggest more economic strength than the bare-bones headline number might indicate. “It portends well for 2018 demand,” he said.
Rosemarie Aquilina, the judge who presided over the astounding sentencing hearing of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar this month, has emerged as a heroine for victims of sexual assault.
Her decision to allow 156 women and girls to address their alleged abuser in court, with their emotional testimony streamed live across the nation, created an invaluable opportunity for catharsis, and directed vital attention to what is likely the worst sex abuse scandal in U.S. sports history.
But Aquilina’s manner during sentencing, in which she said she was honored to sentence Nassar to die in prison and suggested he deserved to be sexually assaulted himself, has raised questions about whether she overstepped her role as an impartial arbiter of justice.
Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.
Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.
Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles.
Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Several, including “The Left Hand of Darkness” — set on a planet where the customary gender distinctions do not apply — have been in print for almost 50 years. The critic Harold Bloom lauded Ms. Le Guin as “a superbly imaginative creator and major stylist” who “has raised fantasy into high literature for our time.”
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Ms. Le Guin speaking in 2014 at the University of Oregon.CreditJack Liu
Even as he awaits a criminal trial for allegedly strangling his girlfriend during a business trip in 2016, Brent Hamilton is still the head of music marketing at Monster Energy, the multibillion-dollar beverage company partly owned by Coca-Cola.
John Kenneally is a vice president at Monster despite three women accusing him of bullying, harassment and retaliation. They say he actively undermined their reputations and forced them out of the company. HuffPost obtained text messages he sent to one of these women, in which he described her as a “whore,” made a racially charged comment about “black dicks,” and used the term “bitch” to refer to both her and another female employee.
Another manager, Phillip Deitrich, regularly humiliated a female subordinate in front of co-workers and sabotaged her ability to work effectively, according to a sex discrimination lawsuit she filed. He still has a job. She left the company.
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Sara Rabuse said Brent Hamilton (right) charmed her early on and she fell in love.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Photo illustration by Adam Ferriss
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Sara Rabuse said Brent Hamilton (right) charmed her early on and she fell in love.
James' World 2 