Portside

• Congress Tangles With the Big Boys
• Parler’s Back: So Much For Free Speech
• Social Media and the Hunt for Vaccine Doses
• Australia vs. Facebook vs. Murdoch
• Cleveland Public Radio Goes Inside the Bricks
• The Attack on India’s Newsclick
• TikTok’s Black Leftist Hype House
• America is Finally Fixing Its Crappy Broadband Availability Maps
• LAPD to Black Lives Matter: Peek-a-boo
• Online Romance is a Ripoff

Congress Tangles With the Big Boys

By Rebecca Klar
The Hill

Facebook and Google are heading into a showdown with Congress over a law that would allow news organizations to bargain with tech platforms over the distribution of their content.

Parler’s Back: So Much For Free Speech

By Ryan Mac
BuzzFeed News

The social media site Parler appeared to have banned its cofounder and former CEO for a day. Parler grew in popularity at the end of 2020, drawing conservatives by positioning itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter and Facebook.

Social Media and the Hunt for Vaccine Doses

By Chris Serres 
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Vaccine chasers” pool their intel on Facebook, with tips on where to get the shots on short notice.

Australia vs. Facebook vs. Murdoch

Mark Z Locks Down News For Aussies By Justin Hendrix, MIT Technology Review

The Murdoch Factor By Chris Dite, Jacobin

Could Facebook Be Right? By Sara Morrison, Vox

Cleveland Public Radio Goes Inside the Bricks

By Lee Chilcote
Current

Cleveland’s WCPN is producing 30-minute podcasts featuring stories of hope and struggle from people living in public housing.

The Attack on India’s Newsclick

By Nandita Haksar
Scroll.in

The political significance of the raids on Newsclick are of much greater politicalsignificance than attacks on individual journalists. Their reporting on the protest by the farmers sitting on Delhi’s borders has attracted some 40 million views.

TikTok’s Black Leftist Hype House

By Noella Williams
Teen Vogue

The cofounders of the Black Leftist Hype House want to introduce readers to the history of Black radicalism. Currently, their account has more than 100,000 followers and 26 members.

America is Finally Fixing Its Crappy Broadband Availability Maps

By Karl Bode
Vice

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand. And for decades the US has refused to accurately measure the full scope of US broadband market failure.

LAPD to Black Lives Matter: Peek-a-boo

By Matthew Guariglia and Dave Maass
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Amazon Ring and other networked home surveillance devices are being used to monitor political activity and protests. 

Online Romance is a Ripoff

By Shirin Ali
CNN

Scammers lurk on dating apps and social media, striking up conversation with strangers until they build up trust to eventually ask for money. A record $304 million was reported lost to romance scams in 2020.