Online advertising is now the dominant form of advertising in many OECD countries, and offers businesses the ability to reach consumers in ways that could only have been imagined previously. Online advertising has the potential to benefit consumers through more relevant and timely advertising, and by funding a host of “free” online services.

However, it also raises some new and complex challenges for consumers and consumer protection authorities. This report by the OECD’s Committee on Consumer Policy provides an introduction to the complex landscape that is online advertising. It outlines the potential benefits and risks for consumers, drawing on the behavioural insights literature where relevant.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/online-advertising_1f42c85d-en

About half of Facebook users say they are not comfortable when they see how the platform categorizes them, and 27% maintain the site's classifications do not accurately represent them

Most commercial sites, from social media platforms to news outlets to online retailers, collect a wide variety of data about their users’ behaviors. Platforms use this data to deliver content and recommendations based on users’ interests and traits, and to allow advertisers to target ads to relatively precise segments of the public. But how well do Americans understand these algorithm-driven classification systems, and how much do they think their lives line up with what gets reported about them? As a window into this hard-to-study phenomenon, a new Pew Research Center survey asked a representative sample of users of the nation’s most popular social media platform, Facebook, to reflect on the data that had been collected about them.

Many Facebook users say they do not know the platform classifies their interests, and roughly half are not comfortable with being categorizedFacebook makes it relatively easy for users to find out how the site’s algorithm has categorized their interests via a “Your ad preferences” page.1 Overall, however, 74% of Facebook users say they did not know that this list of their traits and interests existed until they were directed to their page as part of this study.
www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-and-personal-data/

More Americans get news often from social media than print newspapersSocial media sites have surpassed print newspapers as a news source for Americans: One-in-five U.S. adults say they often get news via social media, slightly higher than the share who often do so from print newspapers (16%) for the first time since Pew Research Center began asking these questions. In 2017, the portion who got news via social media was about equal to the portion who got news from print newspapers.

Social media’s small edge over print emerged after years of steady declines in newspaper circulation and modest increases in the portion of Americans who use social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/

While digital technologies offer leapfrog opportunities and help empower women, gender-based digital exclusion remains widespread and has many causes. The report Bridging the Digital Divide: Include, Upskill, Innovate is an effort by the OECD, working with the G20, that aims to provide policy directions for consideration by all governments. It analyses a range of drivers at the root of the digital gender divide in order to draw attention to critical areas for policy action.
<http://www.oecd.org/going-digital/bridging-the-digital-gender-divide-key-messages.pdf> – key messages
<http://www.oecd.org/going-digital/bridging-the-digital-gender-divide.pdf> – full report

Abstract: Critical theorists from Scott Lash to Trebor Scholz, software studies adherents such as Alex Galloway, sociologists including Manuel Castells, and science and technology studies (STS) theorist Judy Wajcman — among others — have pointed out that the mobility, speed, responsiveness, and increasingly real-time characteristics of computer and application interfaces have a great deal to do with the social, economic, and political structure of contemporary society.

What these fields leave relatively undertheorized can best be phrased as a question: How is technology is developed in relation to concepts of time and temporality? This paper supplies an answer, derived from interview and document data regarding a real-time videoconferencing application named Flume, which runs on Named Data Networking (NDN), a NSF-funded Future Internet Architecture (FIA) project that is currently underway.
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8644

OECD Reviews of Digital Transformation: Going Digital in Sweden analyses recent developments of the digital economy in the country, reviews policies related to digitalisation and makes recommendations to increase policy coherence in this area. The report examines recent developments in infrastructures for the digital economy, telecom markets and related regulations and policies in Sweden. It reviews trends in the use of digital technologies by individuals, businesses and the government, and examines policies to foster diffusion. Digital security policies are discussed with a view to assess its strengths and limitations.

The report also examines opportunities and challenges raised by digitalisation in key areas and analyses policy responses to these changes. The areas covered range from global value chains and innovation to jobs, skills and work in the digital economy. The report reconsiders these policies in relation to their coherence among different domains and in order to foster synergies across government ministries, levels and institutions, based on the policy framework of the OECD-wide “Going Digital: Making the Transformation Work for Growth and Well-being” project.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/oecd-reviews-of-digital-transformation-going-digital-in-sweden_9789264302259-en

The “smart home” looks set to be the arena in which many people will utilise consumer-facing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for the first time. A new generation of familiar household devices and appliances (e.g. washing machines) are becoming “smart” through the addition of sensors, software and Internet connections. They are entering the home alongside innovative IoT era devices (e.g. smart speakers) – often integrating with them to form smart residential systems (e.g. relating to energy, entertainment and home security).

This report outlines the key consumer benefits and risks associated with Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the “smart home”. The benefits include convenience, customisation and control. However, there are potential risks for smart home residents such as data privacy and cybersecurity threats, limitations on interoperability, the need for lifetime product support, complex supply chains and liability regimes, and product safety.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/consumer-policy-and-the-smart-home_e124c34a-en

New digital tools are empowering, and can serve to support a new source of inclusive global economic growth. Now is the time to step up the efforts and take advantage of the digital transformation to ensure that it represents a leapfrog opportunity for women and a chance to build a more inclusive digital world.

Read the first findings of the forthcoming report Empowering Women in the Digital Age. This represents a preliminary effort by the OECD, working with the G20, to broaden the evidence base to better understand the position of women in the economy and society that is being transformed by digital technologies.
http://www.oecd.org/going-digital/

This document examines recent policy and technology approaches to bridging the digital divide in rural and remote areas in OECD countries. First, it discusses issues related to assessing broadband gaps, defining speeds and establishing national targets. Second, it describes policies being implemented to improve both access and uptake, such as fostering competition, promoting national, rural and community-led broadband initiatives, supporting open access policies and reducing deployment costs.

Finally, it briefly reviews technological developments that are likely to influence the provision of services in underserved areas. Experience in OECD countries with fibre optics, coaxial cable, copper, fixed and mobile wireless, satellites and hybrid approaches, as well as with emerging technologies, are used to illustrate some of the technological trends discussed. This document also includes a summary of common challenges and good practices to bring improved communication services to individuals and communities in rural and remote areas.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/bridging-the-rural-digital-divide_852bd3b9-en

Mobile termination rates – the rates operators charge each other to connect calls – dropped by an average of 42% in OECD countries between end-2014 and end-2017 as a result of increased regulation and competition, according to new data released by the OECD.

Termination rates fell across the board in the OECD area over the three years – ultimately benefitting consumers – with the sharpest reductions in Mexico (-84%), Hungary (-80%) and Ireland (-73%). Termination rates are highest in Switzerland, whereas in the United States a new system (bill-and-keep) introduced for mobile carriers has reduced rates to zero.
http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/broadband-statistics-update.htm