Facebook said it's changing its news feed algorithm to increase the visibility of content posted by a user's friends and family. The news feed algorithm changes will come at the expense of content posted directly by publishers, said Vice President-Product Management, News Feed Adam Mosseri in a Wednesday blog post. “The specific impact on your Page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience,” said Engineering Director Lars Backstrom in a separate blog post. “For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through Page posts.” Facebook doesn't “favor specific kinds of sources -- or ideas,” Mosseri said. “Our aim is to deliver the types of stories we’ve gotten feedback that an individual person most wants to see. We do this not only because we believe it’s the right thing but also because it’s good for our business.” Facebook is “not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about,” Mosseri said. “We are in the business of connecting people and ideas -- and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging.” Facebook faced pressure in recent months over allegations it suppressed conservative viewpoints in the trending topics of its news feed (see 1605100032 and 1605170068).

Cisco will pay $293 million to acquire cloud security vendor CloudLock, Cisco said in a news release Tuesday. CloudLock sells cloud access security broker technology to enterprise customers, providing data and analytics about user activity and sensitive data. CloudLock employees will join Cisco’s networking and security business group, Cisco said. The deal is expected to close in Q1, subject to customary closing conditions, it said.

ICANN's New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group is “really just starting to get into the meat of our work,” said working group co-Chairman Jeff Neuman during a session Tuesday at ICANN's Helsinki meeting. ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization Council initiated the PDP after the nonprofit released a report in December urging additional policy development on the gTLD program before any future rounds of new gTLD rollouts (see 1606240055). The working group is deciding what changes could be made to the gTLD rollout process “to clarify what happened” during the original rollout period, Neuman said Tuesday. “We can amend that process, we can override that process, we can develop new policy recommendations or we can supplement and develop new policy guidance.” The working group is exploring whether the new GTLD applicant guidebook used in the initial rollout “is the appropriate approach” for future rollout rounds, Neuman said. The group will decide whether the guidelines should be revised or if there should be different guidebooks for different types of TLDs, he said. The working group also will monitor legal and regulatory issues for the new gTLD program, including whether changes are needed to the base registry agreement, Neuman said. The group is monitoring work in other working groups that may affect its recommendations, including working groups on the use of country and territory names as TLDs and secondary-level domains, Neuman said.

Ayla Networks received $39 million in a series C funding round from a group of investors led by China-based Ants Capital and smart lifestyle product ODM (original design manufacturer) 3NOD, it said Monday. New investors participating in the funding round were Mitsui and Acorn Pacific, said Ayla, while existing investors Cisco Investments, Crosslink Capital, International Finance Corp., Linear Venture, SAIF Partners/Oriza Ventures, SJF Ventures and Voyager Capital reinvested. “The Internet of Things will be the next area where major winners will emerge," said Yin Min, managing partner of Ants Capital, which invested in Ayla due to its "unmatched traction inside China and globally" with manufacturers of IoT products.

ICANN is working to address areas of its Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plans that NTIA flagged as requiring improvements, said ICANN Global Domains Division President Akram Atallah in a Monday blog post. NTIA said the IANA transition plans flagged yellow under 11 of the 70 areas included in Treadway Commission Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) Internal Control Framework Assessment. NTIA in part evaluated the transition plans using the COSO framework after the GAO recommended use of the framework as an evaluation tool (see 1509180065). The 11 areas needing improvement involved governance of the post-transition IANA (PTI), the PTI Audit Committee, PTI operations and ICANN’s new investigatory process, Atallah said. “Although NTIA does not require that any of the recommendations flagged as yellow be resolved as a pre-condition for the completion of the transition, we are confident that there is a clear path forward to address every item,” Atallah said. “We reviewed each of the items against NTIA’s recommended action, and implementation notes have been developed where further work is needed.”

A Nielsen survey on consumer attitudes toward the domain name system and generic top-level domains (gTLDs) reveals that “overall awareness of generic top-level domains has grown when compared to the baseline study that was conducted last year and continues to grow,” said ICANN Global Domains Division President Akram Atallah Thursday in a news release. Nielsen surveyed more than 5,400 consumers in 24 countries in Asia, Europe, North America and South America, ICANN said. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were aware of at least one new gTLD, with increased awareness evident in Asia, Europe and North America, ICANN said in a report on the Nielsen survey. Higher numbers of consumers were aware of legacy TLDs, with 95 percent saying they were aware of the .com domain, ICANN said. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they were aware of the .net domain, while 83 percent were area of .org. Ninety-five percent of respondents said they trusted country-code TLDs, while 91 percent said they considered legacy TLDs trustworthy, ICANN said.

Senate legislation that would restrict an independent federal watchdog to consider the privacy and civil liberties only of U.S. citizens and permanent residents has drawn the ire of five dozen civil society, technology and other advocacy groups and individuals. They said it would harm human rights and trans-Atlantic trade. The coalition sent a letter Friday to senators, urging them to oppose the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2017 (S-3017) that limits the scope of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. introduced the bill June 6 and has no co-sponsors. In its letter, the coalition said PCLOB planned to address the impact of electronic surveillance directed largely outside the U.S. in its next report, but that Section 603 of the bill would prohibit the board from doing that. "The President recognized the important role that the PCLOB can and should play to protect the rights of people outside the United States in the surveillance context," wrote the coalition, which includes Apple, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Google, Microsoft, New America's Open Technology Institute and Georgia Institute of Technology professor Peter Swire, who was a privacy czar during the Clinton administration. They said PCLOB would be prevented from investigating potential violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of non-U.S. persons living in the U.S. Plus, they said limiting the board's authority would "undermine" the proposed EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. "Regardless of one's view of the sufficiency of the Privacy Shield, the agreement was the product of extensive, delicate negotiations" that, in part, relies on PCLOB oversight of U.S. surveillance on non-U.S. persons, the letter said: The Senate bill would "damage the ongoing diplomatic discussions with the EU by barring PCLOB from exercising oversight of the data of Europeans and other non-U.S. persons."

Microsoft proposed three sets of cybersecurity norms Thursday in a white paper aimed at government and industry. The three sets of proposed standards include offensive rules aimed at nation-states, industry-focused tenets and defensive customs aimed at both governments and the private sector. The proposed principles include ones addressing nonproliferation of cyber vulnerabilities, coordination on vulnerability disclosure practices and mitigation of government-initiated cyberattacks. “Norms should advance common objectives where possible, regardless of whether the norms are focused on offense, defense or industry,” said Microsoft Vice President-Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney in a blog post. “While there is a strong complementary structure for nation-state norms and industry norms, they vary in two important instances: nation-states possess the ability to create mass effects through offensive cyber activities; and the global ICT industry has the ability to patch all customers, even during conflicts between and among governments.” Microsoft’s white paper also proposes a public-private forum for addressing the need for attribution of severe cyberattacks, saying further development of attribution processes is needed to make the company’s proposed cybersecurity "rules of the road" effective. “As governments commit increasing resources into offensive cyber capabilities, the global ICT industry must strengthen its resolve, and take active steps to prevent user exploitation through adherence to industry norms,” Charney said. “We must continue to raise the bar in our defensive capabilities to deter nation-states from targeting technology users.”

The Donuts domain name registry said it believes its participation in the anti-piracy Trusted Notifier partnership with MPAA "is a useful and efficient manner for addressing blatant online piracy, and we encourage others in the domain name community to follow suit with similar programs." Donuts and MPAA began their anti-piracy partnership in February, agreeing to a set of strict standards for making anti-piracy referrals (see 1602090029). MPAA has since also expanded the Trusted Notifier program to include UAE-based registry Radix (see 1605130053). MPAA has sent Donuts referrals against six websites using Donuts domain names for potentially infringing content, the registry said Wednesday in a blog post. Donuts suspended two of the domain names, and the registrar for two others deleted those domains. Another registrar took action against one of the referred domains, while another domain remains under MPAA investigation and potential Donuts enforcement action, the registry said. The Trusted Notifier program will hopefully “be a pre-cursor to a more streamlined industry-wide process that all interested parties can develop collaboratively,” Donuts said. MPAA Deputy General Counsel Dean Marks said in a blog post Wednesday “we share Donuts’ enthusiasm and positive evaluation of the constructive and cooperative voluntary relationship that we are building together. Furthermore, we share the same hope for future collaboration with more operators of domain name registries and registrars.”

U.S. broadband homes watch an average 3.8 hours of internet video on TV each week, a fifth of all video viewed on TV, said a Parks Associates report Wednesday. Consumers might increasingly use advertising-blocking technology while streaming video if digital ads disrupt the viewing experience, Parks warned. "Ad blockers have their roots in web publishing, often to prevent full-page overlays or popups that would disrupt the experience,” said Parks analyst Glenn Hower. Content and over-the-top providers and advertisers “need to ensure their methods do not interfere with the viewing experience, which would otherwise drive viewers to ad-blocking technologies,” he said. Growth in personalized OTT service offerings, automated media buying and selling, and advertising in low-income markets have driven greater interest in dynamic ad insertion, said Parks, which forecasts digital video ad revenue will jump from $14.4 billion worldwide this year to $28.9 billion in 2020. Ad blocking, meanwhile, cost the digital publishing industries an estimated $41.4 billion worldwide in 2015, Parks said, at the same time the number of OTT video services tripled from 2010. "Connecting advertisers with appropriate, and accepting, audiences is a significant challenge for ad-supported video providers," Hower said. There are opportunities for more meaningful ads with better response and overall brand retention, he said.