When Obama Visited Reddit

• Michael Hastings, embedded in Chicago for Buzzfeed during the 2012 presidential campaign, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the day President Barack Obama did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything." Short version: As we already know, the Obama campaign did a better job of speaking to people of the Internet in the language of the Internet — in-jokes, pop-culture references, other informalities:

  Obama answered eight questions and was heading into his ninth when Goff let him in on a Reddit in-joke. “There’s this thing about Reddit where people say, ‘Not bad,’ ” Goff told Obama. “Just trust me, that’s a thing. . . .”

  “All right.”

  Closer to the election, your First POST editor made a HuffpoLIVE appearance with Alexis Ohanian and pointed out that the president's answers during that AMA tracked pretty closely with his previous statements. In other words, Reddit worked for interaction between regular people and the president, but not as a platform for getting more information to voters than what voters would otherwise have about the president's views into a second term. The Reddit co-founder replied that Reddit was not a replacement for "real" journalism or "real" journalists. Which, to be honest, makes sense. So the view from techPresident is that this matter is settled: Reddit, and other big platform sites on the Internet, comprise constituencies with a common Internet-centric culture. They are digital towns. Candidates are to sample their local delicacies, shake the hands of their folk, make appearances with their political leaders, highlight the portions of their platform that are relevant to regional issues, and try to win their votes. They make more sense to study as a relatively new cross-section of the country then as a communications platform for new methods of communication with politicians.

  Bonus: Click through to Hastings' piece for the political scoop of the century — Obama officials debating the Reddit puzzler, "Would you choose to fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?"

Around the web

• House floor summaries are now available for download in bulk XML format.

• Google has sponsored free wifi in New York's Chelsea neighborhood for two years. Chelsea joins DUMBO and the Financial District as a New York City neighborhood with at least partial coverage by free wifi.

• Gawker published a list of all New York City gun license owners, and promptly received death threats. In related news, Gawker announced international expansion plans in India and a Spanish-language site. Meanwhile, several government advocacy groups are supporting the Journal News in its quest to obtain gun owner data from New York's Putnam County through the state Freedom of Information Law.

• The White House issued a response to We The People petitions on the legalization of marijuana.

• Ben Jacobs from the Daily Download bemoaned the media's "White House Petition Obsession."

• The Associated Press reported on the high-dollar contributions being sought for Obama's inaguration, and noted that a list of donors being posted online has limited information.

• A bicoastal "Datafest" focused on money's influence on politics and sponsored by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Columbia Journalism School, and the Stanford University Graduate Program in Journalism in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation is taking place Feb. 2 and 3.

• The Associated Press has video of Eric Schmidt visiting a computer lab in North Korea.

• The Washingtonian profiles CBS News' Mark Knoller, known tracking presidential statistics since 1996.

• The Madison Hotel is offering a "social media butler" as part of its inauguration package to help chronicle the experience.

• Satellite vendors at the Consumer Electronics Show suggest they help solve the country's broadband gap with satellite Internet, ars technica reported.

• At the CES, Hank Hultquist, VP of AT&T's federal regulatory division, suggested that the traditional telephone network is obsolete while speaking on a panel focused on the possibility of the switch to an all-IP telecommunications network. Vint Cerf said at CES that he was troubled that AT&T was seeking less government regulation as part of such a transition.

• Democrats are asking the FCC to mandate interoperability requirements for cellphone networks.

• Web TV service Aereo, which is challenging the traditional cable TV business, has received new funding and plans to expand to more cities.

• The Huffington Post published a powerpoint shown to the freshmen members of Congress by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee illustrating the predominance of "call time."

• A conservative advocacy group is targeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in his home state of Kentucky with online ads.

• Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) is using his vote against John Boehner for Speaker in a fundraising e-mail.

• The Justice Department and the Patent and Trademark Office issued a joint policy statement on patents.

• The Atlantic and Politico recapped Nate Silver's Reddit AMA.

• One local CBS station is still sending out iPhone news alerts about the Newtown shooting.

• Twitter explained how it is improving its real-time search mechanism. Jon Mitchell from Read Write Web suggests its capabilities could threaten established news organizations.

• A student lost a lawsuit challenging a Texas school district's RFID tracking program.

• The New York Times reported on Walt Disney World's new plan to track visitors to the amusement park using RFID-enabled wristbands to collect data and personalize the experience.

• The New York Times reported on proposed legislation that would regulate the tracking of smartphone users' locations.

• Mother Jones refutes claims by the writer Naomi Wolf that FBI documents pertaining to Occupy Wall Street reveal some kind of vast conspiracy by federal law enforcement, local law enforcement and big banks.

• Baltimore CIO Chris Tonjes outlined his office's mission at a recent TechBreakfast.

• State officials in West Virginia are narrowing goals for a broadband effort financed with $126.3 million in federal stimulus funding.

• Tom Tresser wrote for the Sunlight Foundation about building up the CivicLab project in Chicago.

• A website called You Are Listening to offers dual livestreams of instrumental ambient music from Soundcloud with police radio dispatches for cities including New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

International

• The British Coalition Government used Storify to help publish its mid-term review. The Labour opposition promoted a Facebook image of an "invoice" from Dave & Nick Ltd. criticizing the government and promoting the website thepriceoftoryfailure.com, where it encourages supporters to submit their story.

• A report produced for the European Parliament suggests that the renewal of FISA allows for mass surveillance of European citizens.

• YouTube said it had mistakenly shut down two channels belonging to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights for violating the site's policy, and has since reinstated them both.

• France's second-largest Internet provider has suspended its ad blocking program after government intervention. Public Knowledge had spoken out against the practice.

• The French Minister for Women's Rights recently called for hate speech to be limited on Twitter. A French Jewish student union is asking a Paris court to force Twitter to identify users who posted anti-Semitic tweets last fall.

• Infojustice highlights webcasts and notes from the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest held in Rio De Janeiro in December.

• Middle East Online has more details on Iran's plan to give its citizens restricted, controlled access to banned social networking sites.

• A U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico removed Chinese-made technology devices it discovered because of security concerns.

• Human rights activists have called for an investigation into British surveillance technology company Gamma International for allegedly exporting surveillance technology to regimes with questionable human rights records.

• Kuwait sentenced a second man to jail for insulting the emir on Twitter.