Europe and the United Kingdom have been coming hard at the tech industry lately: tough privacy laws, fines for anti-competitive behavior, new types of copyright laws, and earlier this week, something called a “digital services” tax from the United Kingdom. Starting in 2020, the U.K. will take 2 percent of online revenue from tech companies, specifically Facebook, Amazon and Google, that make over $600 million a year. The rest of Europe is planning a similar tax, and the idea has even spread to South Korea, India, Mexico, Chile and other countries. Let’s dig into this digital tax idea in Quality Assurance, the Friday segment where we take a deeper look at a big tech story. Molly Wood talks with Mark Scott, chief technology correspondent at Politico. (11/02/18)

In San Francisco next week, voters will decide whether the city’s largest companies, most of them tech, should pay a tax that will raise money to help homeless families. Other cities have tried similar efforts. Voters in Seattle recently overturned a tax on large employers that would have funded affordable housing efforts, and the city’s biggest tech employer, Amazon, strongly objected. But in San Francisco, the city’s biggest tech employer is for the measure. Marc Benioff is the co-CEO of Salesforce, and yes, the guy who just bought Time Magazine. He’s stumping for the ballot measure, called Proposition C. (11/01/18)

Earlier this week, Google announced $25 million in grants for organizations working on “artificial intelligence for social good.” The included things like wildlife conservation, stopping sex trafficking and eliminating biases in algorithms that perpetuate racism and gender discrimination. It’s an admission that algorithms and AI are not neutral, and more care must be taken with their design. Molly Wood talks with Jamie Susskind, author of the new book “Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech.” He argues that we can design algorithms that reflect our highest ideals. (10/31/18)

Earlier this week, Google announced $25 million in grants for organizations working on “artificial intelligence for social good.” The included things like wildlife conservation, stopping sex trafficking and eliminating biases in algorithms that perpetuate racism and gender discrimination. It’s an admission that algorithms and AI are not neutral, and more care must be taken with their design. Molly Wood talks with Jamie Susskind, author of the new book “Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech.” He argues that we can design algorithms that reflect our highest ideals. (10/31/18)

Yesterday on the show, we talked with the fact-checkers trying to clean up Facebook. Today we’re looking at how misinformation on Facebook affects democracy here in America and the social fabric of many other countries, from India to the Philippines to Myanmar. That’s the topic of a two-part Frontline documentary called “The Facebook Dilemma,” airing this week on PBS stations and online. It explores Facebook’s growth and how it has responded to warnings that it can be used for propaganda, violence and to prop up authoritarian regimes. Molly Wood talks with James Jacoby, a producer of the documentary. (10/30/18)

Yesterday on the show, we talked with the fact-checkers trying to clean up Facebook. Today we’re looking at how misinformation on Facebook affects democracy here in America and the social fabric of many other countries, from India to the Philippines to Myanmar. That’s the topic of a two-part Frontline documentary called “The Facebook Dilemma,” airing this week on PBS stations and online. It explores Facebook’s growth and how it has responded to warnings that it can be used for propaganda, violence and to prop up authoritarian regimes. Molly Wood talks with James Jacoby, a producer of the documentary. (10/30/18)

We’re a week away from midterm elections, and it’s time to talk about social media. After the 2016 elections, it became clear that a lot of divisive, misleading and flat-out false information was being shared via Facebook. A study earlier this year said Facebook was responsible for the spread of more false news than any other platform. And once the bad information was out there, fact-checking couldn’t do much to reverse its impact. After the 2016 election, Facebook partnered with a handful of news organizations to combat misinformation before it spread. Two years later, that still very much feels like an uphill battle. Angie Holan, the editor at PolitiFact — one of the outlets working with Facebook — told Molly Wood that official fact-checking partners get access to a special selection of potentially false information. (10/19/18)

We’re a week away from midterm elections, and it’s time to talk about social media. After the 2016 elections, it became clear that a lot of divisive, misleading and flat-out false information was being shared via Facebook. A study earlier this year said Facebook was responsible for the spread of more false news than any other platform. And once the bad information was out there, fact-checking couldn’t do much to reverse its impact. After the 2016 election, Facebook partnered with a handful of news organizations to combat misinformation before it spread. Two years later, that still very much feels like an uphill battle. Angie Holan, the editor at PolitiFact — one of the outlets working with Facebook — told Molly Wood that official fact-checking partners get access to a special selection of potentially false information. (10/19/18)

This week in Brussels, Apple CEO Tim Cook lambasted what he calls the “data-industrial complex” created by the tech industry, calling for the United States to adopt comprehensive digital privacy regulations. Apple has stressed privacy as a selling point over the past couple of years, but this was a broadside at a couple of the other biggest tech firms in the world, namely Facebook and Google. It’s worth noting that it’s easy for Apple to tout privacy when the option it’s offering is a closed ecosystem where the company controls every aspect of the technology. We dig into this in Quality Assurance, the Friday segment where we take a deeper look at a big tech story. Molly talked with Tony Romm, a tech policy reporter at The Washington Post. (10/26/18)