Facebook Looks for New Approaches to the Fake News Problem
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2016 was “surreal.” The Oxford English Dictionary went with “post-truth.” The Australian Macquarie Dictionary settled on “fake news.” No matter what term social media app developers prefer to use to define it, 2016 was the year that the conspiracies, propaganda, and outright hooey that used to be the purview […]
Tech Giants Stand Up for Clean Energy in the Trump Era
Silicon Valley’s attitude toward Donald Trump on the campaign trail was decidedly less than enthusiastic. Sure, contrarian Peter Thiel stood with the loose cannon Republican candidate, but his politics have always leaned further right than most of his colleagues. The vast majority of the tech world viewed Trump with skepticism, uncertain of what his approach […]
Lyft Leans Into “Woke” Image In an Attempt to Unseat Uber
As Uber struggles to shake the bad press that has come to define its year so far, its primary competitor Lyft is seizing its moment and trying to move out of a distant second place in the rideshare market. Ever since the #DeleteUber commotion in January, Lyft’s strategy seems to be to present itself as […]
Senate Dismantles Obama-Era Internet Privacy Protections
For app developers concerned with privacy, yesterday was a dark day. Senate Republicans passed a bill eliminating privacy regulations imposed on broadband providers by the FCC during the final months of the Obama presidency. Those protections would have required ISPs to get consent from the consumer before selling off personal information to a third party. […]
How Peter Thiel’s Political Stance Affects Startups
Ellen Pao of Project Include took to Medium this week to explain why they were breaking off ties with prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator. The reason, in short: Peter Thiel’s increasingly unpredictable endorsements and behavior. While Thiel has drawn criticism from the tech community before thanks to his support of floating cities, morality-bending age extension […]