Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Will Oremus.

And I'm April Glaser.

Hello and welcome to If Then.

We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America.

We're recording this on the afternoon of Monday, January 30th.

On today's show, we'll talk about a clever effort to restore net neutrality in Montana and New York.

We'll discuss Facebook's latest news feed tweaks.

Yes, again, this time it's trying to resuscitate the local news economy by putting more

stories from local sources in your feed. And later we'll be joined by DePai and Gosh, a former

privacy and policy advisor to Facebook, the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton's

presidential campaign.

We'll talk about his recent report on how digital advertising technologies, like the ones you find on Facebook and Google, lend themselves to disinformation campaigns and what the government can do about it.

And lastly, don't close my tabs.

Our picks for Best on the Web this week.

April, how are you doing this week? I see that you are in our Slate Studios in D.C. I am. I'm in Slate H.Q. I went to the other side of

the country this week. You're still in California. I am. It's beautiful here. But let's talk about a

development coming out of Montana and New York. What's new in the net neutrality world?

Yes. Well, last week, the governors of both states, Montana first and then New York,

introduced executive orders that require all internet providers that provide services to the state

government, so like that have contracts with the schools or the post office or the police department adhere to the principles of network neutrality, right? And so that means that for those government services, you know, the internet providers that are on contract with the state cannot block websites. They can't slow down or

speed up or throttle content. They can't, you know, charge websites to reach users faster,

...