Archive: Year: 2015

Too Much Information Brave new media ecology: If you read just one article on the implications of the reported deal between Facebook and The New York Times (as well as a few other marquee publishers) to move the latter's content onto the former's platform, read this warning from veteran tech observer and entrepreneur John Battelle. OK, you can also read this one by Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic, imagining Facebook as the "Walmart of News." On NiemanLab, Joshua Benton does a good job of explaining what this means for everyone else--particular media makers mulling their own jump to distributed content models. There's always podcast and email newsletters (like this one!)--two channels that no one controls access to. Closer to confirmed: Philip Rucker reports...

Firsts So the first new-fangled tech tool to make it into a bona fide presidential campaign story wasn't Meerkat, it was Yik Yak. Turns out some of the reporters in attendance for Senator Ted Cruz's big announcement speech at Liberty University used some of the app's localized anonymous comments to pep up their stories on Cruz's launch, reports Chris Thompson for Poynter. The first lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality regulations have been filed, reports Brian Fung for the Washington Post. Facebook wants to host news content on its own servers, and it looks like The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic will be initial partners in its effort, report Ravi Somaiya, Mike Isaac and Vindu Goel for the New York Times....

Cowed Texas Senator Ted Cruz is officially running for president, announcing via Twitter at midnight last night. Meanwhile, there appears to be something amiss with TedCruz.com. Noticing that presidential candidate John Ellis (Jeb) Bush and Dan Balz, the Washington Post reporter, are both Meerkating, Politico media reporter Dylan Byers hyperventilates and says that "today, or maybe yesterday, is the day that Meerkat officially became the social media tool of the 2016 election." Matt Browner-Hamlin, a veteran of the Chris Dodd 2008 presidential campaign, gently reminds Dan Pfeiffer--he of the "Meerkat is going to revolutionize 2016" view--that live-streaming "isn't new to American politics." Back in 2007, he notes, "[We] used UStream to live stream anywhere from one to three speeches and Q&A sessions...

Checking The US threatened to stop sharing intelligence information with Germany if the country offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the country's vice chancellor said this week, reports Glenn Greenwald for The Intercept. The Republican presidential candidates all pretty much follow each other on Twitter, this graphic from Bloomberg Politics shows. A new study by Philly Political Media Watch, a project funded by the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation and led by the Internet Archive, found that the ratio of political advertising time to political news stories on Philadelphia TV stations (which took in a combined $14 million from political advertisers) was 45:1 in the last weeks leading up to the 2014 election. In case you missed that: forty-five to...

Complications It's Sunshine Week: After I chided Jason Ross Arnold for his on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand review of the Obama administration's transparency record in Tuesday's First POST ("spoken like a true academic," I wrote), he good-naturedly emailed me and offered the full text of his review, which was abridged in the Washington Post. Here it is, published yesterday on techPresident. I take back my jab at academics. Notably, Arnold pulls no punches in saying the Obama administration "will not serve as the model for the most transparent administration yet to come." The AP's Ted Bridis reports that the Obama administration has set a record for censoring or denying access to files requested under the Freedom of Information Act. On the other hand: New White...

Hoodwinking Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) writes in Politico that we shouldn't allow government to "crash" the Internet party. It's worth reading his op-ed if you want the full gist of the current disinformation campaign against net neutrality. Rubio claims the FCC is going to "play favorites" with Internet service providers, which is like saying SEC plays favorites with stock brokers by requiring them to play by the same rules. He also claims the Internet "is a place…[not] unlike a city or town"--which it is not, it is a set of protocols. And finally, he argues that "it belongs in the hands of our people," which is a welcome sentiment that completely elides the fact that most of it runs thru pipes...

One of the enduring values of the Personal Democracy community is the belief that people using the Internet and other connection technologies can make civic participation easier and more effective. Not only that, we think that activism and community action enabled by tech can involve much more than the "thin" kinds of engagement that are so prevalent today in the advocacy sector. Tech can enable much deeper kinds of connections between people, communities and those with power, and make everyday life better for people in the process. At scale. That, in just a few words, is the essence of today's civic tech movement. It includes any tool or process that people may use to help themselves solve their own problems, influence...

Modern Times Finally, one American state--Oregon--has decided to modernize its political system by automatically registering people to vote, rather than putting the burden on them, Sheila Kumar reports for the Associated Press. Any adult citizen who has interacted with the state's Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division since 2013 but isn't registered will have a ballot mailed to them before the next election. It's Sunshine Week, and in the Washington Post, Monkey Cage blogger Jason Ross Arnold reviews the Obama administration's promise to be the "most transparent administration in history." His conclusion: it's made some progress but "arguably falls short of what Obama promised." Spoken like a true academic. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans have heard something about government surveillance programs in the...

If last week's turnout at Civic Hall is any indication, a lot of people--technologists as well as organizers--are interested in figuring out how the 21st century economy can be built on more cooperative and less exploitative principles than the libertarian "gig economy" exemplified by companies like TaskRabbit and Uber. Folks came out for a panel discussion called "Think Outside the Boss: Cooperative Alternatives to the Sharing Economy," which was triggered by a thought-provoking essay in Medium by Trebor Scholz, a professor at The New School. He wrote: ...

Reaching House Speaker John Boehner is planning to announce a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including a focus on the 31,000 emails she deleted because she deemed them to be personal, ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Liz Kreutz and Shushannah Walshe report. Yesterday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden held a private but not off-the-record meeting with about two dozen senior techies and privacy advocates attending SXSW, reports Adi Robertson for The Verge. One participant described Snowden's remarks as a "call to arms" to tech companies to adopt more secure communications to "raise the costs" to the NSA of mass surveillance. Talk about "vaporware": Secrecy around StingRay, a cellphone tracking tool used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies...