If you are concerned about democracy and consumer choice, direct your attention to "social distribution" -- a shift in publishing, and a threat to publishing independence, that's advancing at a breathtaking pace and scale. When you click on a Facebook Instant Article or an item from Google Amp, somewhere an important story is dying -- because social distribution, like high school and presidential campaigns, overwhelmingly benefits the popular.

If you are one of the handful of Americans who still watches commercials, you know that AT&T already offers subscribers of its recently acquired DirecTV subsidiary free streaming on its wireless network. You can watch a whole movie or next week's Eagles-Cowboys showdown without using any data from your plan. Now, if its announced $85.4 billion acquisition of Time-Warner goes through, presumably the same deal will apply for streaming CNN, TNT and HBO.

The FTC warns that if it has no regulatory authority here, then wireless carriers, cloud networks, email platforms and others will be able to violate privacy, bait and switch prospects, throttle their networks and otherwise run roughshod over consumers of digital services -- which is to say: everyone. But the 9th Circuit told the government no dice.

Welcome to the second presidential debate, a town hall convened at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. This is the second of three debates between the candidates for the presidency.

Claude Jellicot and Luke Severn-Jenkins met at Arizona State, where they developed a hybrid species of corn and chili pepper, which they further engineered into a naturally spicy popcorn they dubbed Cornpeppers. Sensing a phenomenon, they patented the seed and quit school halfway through their junior year to start up Cornpeppers Global with a novel food product and even more novel business model. They gave Cornpeppers away.