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Donald Trump talked on Twitter during his campaign, but Facebook was the crucial tool that helped elect him, says the man who directed the digital aspects of the Trump campaign. In a “60 Minutes” interview, Brad Parscale says he handpicked Republican Facebook employees — he calls them “embeds” — to guide him with placement of microtargeted ads. On Saturday, Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos released an unusually raw tweetstorm defending the company’s software algorithms against critics who believe Facebook needs more oversight. [CBS News]
President Trump is willing to support the DACA ‘Dreamers’ act — if Congress will fund a border wall and other immigration proposals that Silicon Valley hates. Trump shared the ultimatum late on Sunday; DACA has allowed about 800,000 young beneficiaries to live and work in the U.S. on renewable authorizations. [Tony Romm / Recode]
One of the millions influenced by AOL’s iconic instant messaging service was then-teenage Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for whom it was a pivotal social tool. AOL is shutting down the service after 20 years, and in a Facebook post on Saturday, Zuckerberg recalls hacking AIM just a bit, creating an early version of an online activity indicator to help his father’s business. [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Also in a musing mood after a week of launching new hardware products, Google CEO Sundar Pichai remembered his childhood roots in India and his culture shock after his father saved up to fly the young engineeer to Silicon Valley. Pichai also talks in-depth about Google's position on the vanguard of technological development, from artificial intelligence to cheap smartphones. But, he cautions, “I don’t know whether humans want to change that fast.” [Jemima Kiss / The Guardian]
Credit-reporting agency TransUnion has quietly hired a squad of cybersecurity-focused Washington, D.C. lobbyists, a reaction to the legislative and regulatory heat facing its rival, Equifax, which is being investigated after a major data breach affecting the personal data of 145 million Americans. TransUnion did not say whether it had experienced a security exploit of its own. [Tony Romm / Recode]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
