Mathew Ingram

I write about digital media for the Columbia Journalism Review. I'm an expert in stucco, a veteran in love and an outlaw in Peru (via https:

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Nov. 19, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Congress and the platforms: The circus is back in town

While the president continues to rant about conspiracies he believes denied him the election, the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to hold yet another hearing into the alleged misbehavior of Facebook and Twitter. This comes less than a month after…

Nov. 13, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Will Donald Trump start his own right-wing news channel?

As Trump and his allies continue their desperate efforts to overturn the election results, there are reports that the soon-to-be former president is planning to launch his own media venture. Mike Allen, of Axios, wrote in his newsletter on Thursday…

Nov. 12, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

What does a Joe Biden presidency mean for tech?

While Donald Trump does his best to muddy the election waters with lawsuits alleging non-existent voting fraud and other nefarious behavior, pragmatists in a number of fields are busy preparing for a Biden presidency, and trying to anticipate what to…

Oct. 29, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Another tech hearing in Congress becomes a circus sideshow

One of the notable things about the last Congressional hearing with executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter this summer—the final hearing in a fifteen-month-long investigation by the House Committee on Antitrust—was how intelligent most of the…

Oct. 22, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

The Google case is a stew of technology, law, and politics

Two weeks ago, the House subcommittee on antitrust released a 400-plus page report detailing the anti-competitive practices of the four major digital platforms — Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook — and called for the Department of Justice (among…

Oct. 16, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Facebook, Twitter, and what news is fit to share

On Wednesday, both Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit the distribution of a news story from a mainstream publication, on the grounds that it was based on hacked emails and of questionable accuracy. Twitter actually prevented users from posting…

Oct. 15, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Yes, we’re doing it all over again

Since Donald Trump became president, there has been a never-ending series of articles about what the media did to enable his victory. Near the top of that list is the air time and free advertising ($2 billion worth, according to one estimate) given…

Oct. 8, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

House slams monopolistic tech giants for abusing their power

This week, a regulatory process that began in June of last year finally reached its conclusion: the House Subcommittee on Antitrust released a report on the monopolistic practices of four globe-spanning digital platforms: Facebook, Google, Amazon,…

Oct. 1, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Can we make Facebook and Google “democratic utilities?”

Over the past decade, Google and Facebook have built globe-spanning digital platforms that impact almost every facet of our lives, and often in harmful ways. Apart from their use of “surveillance capitalism” on a massive scale, or their distribution…

Sep. 24, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

TikTok, a political football, is still up in the air

The political drama surrounding TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app, already seemed to be at a fever pitch in recent weeks: as the clock ticked down on an executive order from Donald Trump that gave the company a deadline to sell the…

Sep. 17, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

How can we fight surveillance capitalism?

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of a new kind of corporate power, one built on an almost unprecedented level of digital surveillance, fueled by the demands of the global advertising industry—a phenomenon that Harvard professor emerita…

Sep. 4, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Facebook’s belated, vague, unhelpful election idea

On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, wrote of his worry that “with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the…

Sep. 3, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

China throws a wrench into TikTok acquisition plans

Over the past year or so, the TikTok video-sharing app has become one of the hottest mobile services. But it has also become one of the largest political footballs in recent memory, thanks to an executive order that Donald Trump issued in early…

Sep. 2, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Facebook threatens to block Australian news if law goes ahead

Two weeks ago, Google started showing users in Australia a popup message, warning that some of the company’s services might be impaired as a result of a proposed content-licensing law, which would require large digital platforms to pay publishers in…

Sep. 1, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Voice of America staff rebel over new CEO’s comments

A group of journalists who work for Voice of America, the US state-backed broadcaster, sent management a letter of protest Monday denouncing the new chief executive of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and a number of other similar…

Aug. 31, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Trump turns up the protest heat

On Saturday, protests in Portland turned violent after a convoy of Trump supporters drove into the city, their pickup trucks filled with American flags and in some cases people carrying weapons (although supporters said many of them were paintball…

Aug. 28, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

What should we do about QAnon now that it has gone mainstream?

Not that long ago, the jumble of conspiracy theories and magical thinking known as QAnon was seen by many—if they knew of it at all—as a sideshow confined to the dark corners of the internet, alternative communities like 4chan and 8chan, where people…

Aug. 20, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

Google plays hardball in Australia over news payment law

Google users in Australia started seeing a warning pop up on their search pages this week: a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside it, and a message that said “The way Aussies use Google is at risk.” Those who clicked on the popup were…

Aug. 13, 2020

Columbia Journalism Review

The QAnon cult is growing and the media is helping

Stocks and bonds may be weak, but we’re still in a raging bull market for one commodity, and that is disinformation. That’s thanks in large part to the fact that President Donald Trump creates and distributes so much of it himself, both through his…

Aug. 12, 2020

Fortune

Sumner Redstone, Viacom founder and old-fashioned media mogul, dies at 97

Much of the final years of Sumner Redstone's life were spent tied up in fractious litigation over his multibillion-dollar estate, but in his prime he was a man who truly embodied the old-fashioned term "media mogul." Through his ownership of both…