Business, Spoken

I’m totally fine with this. The women sitting cross-legged on the floor around me are passing around a wooden box and dropping their phones inside. It’s coming my way, and I’ve been instructed to jot down my feelings about parting with my phone. I’m totally fine with this, I write, which is a lie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you click on the right-hand corner of any advertisement on Facebook, the social network will tell you why it was targeted to you. But what would happen if those buried targeting tactics were transparently displayed, right next to the ad itself? That's the question at the heart of new research from Harvard Business School published in the Journal of Consumer Research. It turns out advertising tr...

On Tuesday Facebook reorganized the duties of its product executives, in the process creating an unusual new division: David Marcus, formerly head of Facebook’s Messenger app, will now lead a team of fewer than a dozen people dedicated to blockchain technology, according to Recode. He’ll be joined by notable executives including Kevin Weil, former VP of product at Instagram, and James Everingham,...

Last week T-Mobile and Sprint, two of the four nationwide mobile wireless network operators, agreed to merge in a deal valued at $26.5 billion. Not surprisingly, the companies are making a lot of promises to gain the support of both the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, both of which must approve the merger. But consumers should not be fooled. Learn more about your a...

How much do workers at tech firms make? The answer varies a lot, depending on the employer. The median employee at Amazon made $28,446 last year, according to new disclosures required by the Securities and Exchange Commission. At Facebook, the median employee made $240,430, more than eight times as much. There are reasons for the big disparity, of course: Facebook’s 25,000 employees include many s...

Everyone knows Washington is a swamp filled with snakes and influence peddlers. And few believed President Trump would do much to change that, despite his "drain the swamp" battle cry. In fact, one could argue he has done much since taking office to encourage influence peddling. He refused to put his assets in a blind trust or release his tax returns. That means he can know which people, businesse...

Yale Fox’s business doesn’t work unless everyone thinks its fair. His startup, Rentlogic, relies on an algorithm to score New York City landlords on how well they take care of their properties. It’s an easy way for tenants to avoid bedbugs and mold, and for landlords to signal they take good care of their properties. But it isn’t enough for Rentlogic’s score to just exist; Fox needs landlords and...

You might be seeing a lot of red on the internet Wednesday. Many sites, including Etsy, Reddit, and OKCupid will adorn their pages with “red alerts” asking readers to tell their representatives to save net neutrality. Last December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to jettison its Obama-era rules forbidding broadband providers from blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating again...

There’s a problem with Facebook’s focus on “community.” Amid criticism of its data security and its role in the 2016 election, Facebook in June announced a change to its mission. No longer would the company strive to make the world more open and connected. Rather, the company declared, it would bring its 2.2 billion users, and thus the world, “closer together” by building community. Learn more abo...

Time was software companies left inventing new hardware to others. Google’s search and ads empire was built on infrastructure assembled from commodity components, for example. But the growing competition among tech companies in artificial intelligence has convinced some software makers to change their spots. Some Google servers now include chips customized for machine learning called TPUs that the...

Wall Street and Silicon Valley have never been happy bedfellows, and that was on full display this week during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. These calls are usually dull affairs, with CEOs or CFOs reading a prepared script summarizing the already-released financial results and articulating the main goals of the company that have, presumably, been stated before. Learn more about your ad choices....

Last month four Seattle city councilmembers proposed a new corporate tax that aims to build more affordable housing and expand services for the homeless. In response, Amazon announced this week that it will halt construction on a new building and consider subleasing to others a second building, pending the council's vote on the proposal. Together, the two buildings could have hosted at least 7,000...

Artificial intelligence is a recurring theme in recent remarks by top executives at Alphabet. The company’s latest Founders’ Letter, penned by Sergey Brin, is no exception—but he also finds time to namecheck possible downsides around safety, jobs, and fairness. The company has issued a Founders’ Letter---usually penned by Brin, cofounder Larry Page or both---every year, beginning with the letter t...

Facebook has problems. Fake news. Terrorism. Russian propaganda. And maybe soon regulation. The company’s solution: Turn them into artificial-intelligence problems. The strategy will require Facebook to make progress on some of the biggest challenges in computing. During two congressional sessions last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg referenced AI more than 30 times in explaining how the company would...

Using a social network like Facebook is a two-way street, part-shrouded in shadow. The benefits of sharing banter and photos with friends and family—for free—are obvious and immediate. So are the financial rewards for Facebook; but you don’t get to see all of the company’s uses for your data. An artificial intelligence experiment of unprecedented scale disclosed by Facebook Wednesday offers a glim...

The California Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the gig economy on Monday in a decision that will have far-reaching effects not just for the likes of Uber and GrubHub, but for many different types of employers. The court ruled that employers must treat workers who do work related to a company's "usual course of business" as full-fledged employees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcast...

When he testified before Congress last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the problem of using artificial intelligence to identify online hate speech. He said he was optimistic that in five to 10 years, “We will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging content for our systems, but today we’re not just th...

Mark Zuckerberg knew his keynote speech at F8 this year would not be like any other. His previous appearances at Facebook's annual developer's conference were all about the new products and technology Facebook was announcing that day, and the vision he would share for future triumphs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

US Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) represents much of Silicon Valley, but he’s not just a cheerleader for the hometown industry. He supports tougher antitrust review of tech mergers, for one thing. Khanna is also trying to draft an “Internet Bill of Rights,” principles that he hopes can later form the basis of legislation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Sprint may soon be no more. Today the venerable telecommunications company announced plans to merge with T-Mobile in an all-stock deal. If regulators give the go-ahead, the new company will be called simply T-Mobile, and T-Mobile's current chief executive officer John Legere will be its CEO. That's a big if. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At best, advertising is something people tolerate while consuming media. At worst, it’s a turnoff. Media companies engage in a delicate balance between showing audiences enough ads to earn a profit without annoying them so much they leave altogether. A new study by internet radio service Pandora shows that too many ads can motivate users to pay for an ad-free version, but push many more to listen...

Facebook's new ad promises to better protect users. On Wednesday, American TV viewers, including fans watching the NBA Playoffs, caught the launch of a major national advertising campaign from Facebook that will appear online, in movie theaters, public transit, billboards, and TV through the summer. “We came here for the friends,” the TV voiceover begins, emphasizing that Facebook is about connect...

If you've ever applied for a job, chances are someone has run a criminal background check on you. But what exactly does that mean? "There's often a misconception that you can order a one-stop shop of information on a person, but that doesn't exist," says Melissa Sorenson, the executive director of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners. Instead, a background check typically...

If you eat someone, do not share it on Facebook. Cannibalism videos are banned. Same with still images of cannibalism victims, alive or dead. Unless the image is presented in a medical context with a warning that only those 18 and over can see it. But fetish content regarding cannibalism? Verboten for all ages. And not just on News Feed; it's also a no-no on other Facebook properties like Instagra...

Berlin startup Spil.ly had a problem last spring. The company was developing an augmented-reality app akin to a full-body version of Snapchat’s selfie filters—hold up your phone and see your friends’ bodies transformed with special effects like fur or flames. To make it work, Spil.ly needed to train machine-learning algorithms to closely track human bodies in video. Learn more about your ad choice...