Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• AdAge | Rolling into 2018 like…2018 Resolutions We’d Like to See (4 min read)
• Daily Beast | Facebook and Google’s Dirty Secret: They’re Really Junk Mail Empires (4 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal | EU Asks: Does Control of ‘Big Data’ Kill Competition? (4 min read)
• The Guardian | No tracking, no revenue: Apple’s privacy feature costs ad companies millions (3 min read)
• Doc Searls | The human solution to Facebook’s machine-produced problems also won’t work (6 min read)
• Recode | The leading lobbying group for Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants is joining the legal battle to restore net neutrality (2 min read)
• MediaShift | The Real Cost of the ‘Free’ Internet (6 min read)
• Recode | Facebook is testing a new section of the app specifically for local news and events (3 min read)
• NiemanLab | What the rise of the smart speaker might mean for podcasts (and on-demand audio in general) (10 min read)
• The Guardian | Tough new German law puts tech firms and free speech in spotlight (5 min read)