Tag Archives: Facebook News

Weekly output: online-news problems and possibilities, Mark Vena podcast

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Sometimes these weekly recaps only feature me talking about my coverage instead of, you know, actual examples of my coverage. This week is one of those times.

Screenshot of CPI page showing my event, with a still frame from the video4/7/2021: The Future of Innovation in News Production, Competition Policy International

I moderated this panel on problems and possibilities for online news publishers, featuring eco – Association of the Internet Industry policy adviser Thomas Bihlmayer, tech-policy lawyer Cathy Gellis, and Public Knowledge competition policy director Charlotte Slaiman. Spoiler alert: We did not solve the media’s business-model problems in the hour we had, but the participants all made great points, and I would be happy to pick up the discussion with any of them.

4/7/2021: SmartTechCheck Podcast (4-6-21), Mark Vena

The topic I discussed on this week’s installment of this tech analyst’s podcast: the Supreme Court’s termination of Oracle’s attempt to get courts to grant it a new intellectual-property monopoly, a quest that would have had disastrous effects on interoperability and competition in the software industry. As I said on the show (also available in video form): You can hate Google and still like this ruling.

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Weekly output: homework-gap help, Facebook and the media, Apple’s app-tracking prompt

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I’m writing this under a moderate amount of duress, in that WordPress has demoted the “Classic Editor” to a block you can invoke in the middle of a post written with the Block Editor about which I continue to grumble. One reason why: The Block Editor, notwithstanding improvements in its image-handling functions, still doesn’t appear to offer an indent feature, forcing me to switch gears one paragraph at a time to use the Classic block in this post.

3/16/2021: Two new bills could put a dent in technology’s ‘homework gap’, Fast Company

One of the better reasons to use (and pay for) a note-taking app is the ability to dredge up a quote from two years ago that shows one of the people you’re writing about was tuned into a problem before a pandemic put it in a harsh spotlight.

3/19/2021: Facebook Wants To Put News Back On Its Friends List, Forbes

You can see from the page-view totals shown atop this post that not many people read it. On the other hand, reporting this out gave me a chance to check in with a couple of my favorite journalism-conference people. And my including a link to my Patreon page was followed by a new reader signing up there. 

3/20/2021: What an upcoming Apple privacy prompt will mean for you – and the apps you use, USA Today

Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt–your invitation to ask apps not to track your usage across other apps–drew full-page-newspaper-ad opposition from Facebook a few months ago, but since then other large tech giants have responded to it with a remarkable level of equanimity. This post also quotes a mobile-marketing consultant who warns that smaller developers have much more to lose.

Weekly output: Facebook and politically-tied local news, smartphone plans

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This week was a lot less hectic than the week before, and yet most of the items on my household to-do list remain undone.

8/13/2020: No, Facebook Isn’t Getting Political Clickbait Out Of Its News Tab, Forbes

I took a closer look at a new Facebook policy about political propaganda disguised as news and found two huge holes in it. I was pleasantly surprised to see the tech-news aggregator Techmeme give this post a shout-out, but a plug from that influential site doesn’t seem to have graced me with a lot of extra page views.

8/13/2020: The Best Cell Phone Plans, Wirecutter

This update to the smartphone-plans guide I’ve been maintaining since 2014 leads with the same two picks as before, but the Verizon plan we endorse as the best choice for most people is no longer limited to a single line, while T-Mobile’s advantage for high data use includes a big lead in usable 5G connectivity. (We thought about giving our best-for-most-people nod to an AT&T plan that offered more data but cost more, but “don’t buy more than you need” is a big Wirecutter principle.) This update also benefited from a more systematic process of ranking all of the services we considered in 11 different categories, from coverage to to cost to customer-satisfaction scores.