Facebook’s public-relations department probably had another busy week, with all sorts of walkbacks and investigations concerning the company’s products and practices. El Kaiser and J.D. discuss some of the major events, as well as changes to the way Twitter enforces its rules and the State of New York investigating the net neutrality comments wars. J.D. also offers a look at the SmartNews app — which as its name implies — tries to gather online news in an intelligent way. Set your nav computer for Episode 290!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Episode

• It turns out that Facebook could in fact use data collected from its Portal in-home video device to target you with ads (Recode)
• Facebook Portal privacy walkback: company admits will collect data for ad-serving (9to5Mac)
• Advertisers Allege Facebook Failed to Disclose Key Metric Error for More Than a Year (The Wall Street Journal)
• In Virginia House Race, Anonymous Attack Ads Pop Up on Facebook (The New York Times)
• Facebook Finds Hack Was Done by Spammers, Not Foreign State (The Wall Street Journal)
• Enabling further research of information operations on Twitter (Twitter blog)
• More clarity on reported Tweets and enforcement (Twitter blog)
• Hello, Wear OS by Google™. Spotify Here. (Spotify)
• How an Unlikely Family History Website Transformed Cold Case Investigations (The New York Times)
• After backlash, Verizon giving 3 months’ free service to Florida counties hit hardest by Hurricane Michael (9to5Mac)
• New York Attorney General Expands Inquiry Into Net Neutrality Comments (The New York Times)
• Chrome’s turning 10, here’s what’s new (Google blog)

App Spotlight

• This free news app lets you read stories from more than 300 trusted sites — even when you don’t have an Internet connection (Business Insider)
• SmartNews app reaches 10 million monthly users as it counters fake news (VentureBeat)
• About SmartNews
• SmartNews for Android
• SmartNews for iOS