Marketplace Tech

During the election, 146 million people on Facebook and Instagram might have been reached by Russian-linked political ads. Facebook and other social media companies are reliant on ad revenue to survive. So their business model is also the very thing that allows misinformation to spread. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Geoffrey Parker, one of the authors of the book “Platform Revolution,” about the value of a “like.”

Representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter are testifying before Congress this week about propaganda and misinformation on their networks. Russian operatives created fake accounts across the political divide: one called “Secured Borders,” raised concerns about illegal immigration, while another, called “Blacktivist,” called for more activism in the African-American community. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Loyola communications and African-American studies professor Karsonya Wise Whitehead about whether these accounts were successful in exacerbating racial tensions in America.

The next census is coming up in 2020, when the government will set out to count every single person living in the U.S. It’s a system that helps determine how federal money gets spent and who and where businesses are investing. But some populations are harder to count than others, even as the Census Bureau moves more of their data collection online. The Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York created an interactive map highlighting those populations. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Steven Romalewski of CUNY’s Center for Urban Research about what’s at stake for these communities.

Companies are required to file equal employment opportunity reports with the government. But few make that information public. Reporters at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX looked into how diversity stacks up in Silicon Valley. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talked with reporter Will Evans about why hard data on diversity in tech remains a bit of a mystery.

Think about all the apps you use in a day: Amazon, Facebook, Gmail, maybe Lyft or Uber. In China, some of those apps are banned. But it’s possible to use one app — WeChat — to do lots of things, like sending messages and ordering taxis. Facebook Messenger is trying to take on the same role in the U.S. Jennifer Pak, Marketplace's new China correspondent, gives us the lowdown on WeChat and talks about why there's no equivalent in the U.S. ... yet.

A ransomware attack called Bad Rabbit hit this week, starting in Europe and spreading to businesses in the U.S. This is the latest in a string of ransomware attacks in the past year. On this episode, we look at how an attack affected KQED, the National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco. And we talk to a security expert about how to protect your business and recover from an attack.

There’s a group of venture capital firms that want to change the world for the better and make money. This is called impact investing. One of the firms working in this space is Impact America Fund, which invests in companies with diverse missions – for instance, a startup that helps African-American stylists sell their own hair extensions. Marketplace Tech host Molly Woods talks with Impact America Fund founder Kesha Cash about the sometimes complex collision of money and mission in venture capital.

A bunch of creatives have already dreamed about what the colonization of Mars would look like. Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson believes the way we colonize Mars will be similar to how we govern Antarctica. Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood talks to Robinson, who wrote the Mars trilogy, about his detailed vision for life on the red planet.

Facebook told us this month that it suspended two accounts that may have had ties to Russian operatives. The account “Blacktivist” paid attention to issues in the black community, and accrued more followers than the official Black Lives Matters account did. Another one named “Secured Borders” called for a crackdown on illegal immigration. People who followed these accounts said they seemed genuine, and engaged with them like real organizations. It made us wonder: what happens when social media meets propaganda? Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood talks with Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown, about the history propaganda and how social media changed its reach.

Right now, states and cities decide if and how they want autonomous vehicles on their streets. The U.S. Senate is considering a measure that would standardize the rules of the road and let automakers sell more cars with self-driving capabilities over the next three years. It's passed out of committee and will go to a full Senate vote in the coming weeks. The House of Representatives has already passed a different version of the bill. Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, one of the sponsors of the bill, talks with Molly Wood about the legislation.