Aarti Shahani

Two words for you: flying taxis. That's right. In the not-so-distant future, you'll open your ride-hailing app and, in addition to ground options like car, SUV, scooter or bicycle, you'll see on-demand air flight.

At least that's according to the optimists at South by Southwest, the annual tech-music-film convention in Austin, Texas.

Over the weekend in Austin, Texas, South by Southwest became a major presidential forum. More than half a dozen candidates showed up to the annual music, arts and technology convention. Democrats competed with each other to be the tough-on-tech candidate, a development in line with the party's move to the left but at odds with its reliance on tech donors.

Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promises to bring end-to-end encryption and self-destruct features to Messenger and other Facebook apps, in a move meant to signal the tech behemoth's commitment to privacy. He announced the proposed changes in a a blog post Wednesday.

As Facebook struggles to repair its image after a global privacy scandal, the social media giant is trying to make the platform a place that Mark Zuckerberg says encourages "meaningful interactions between people."

One person who embodies Zuckerberg's message is Lola Omolola, an ebullient 41-year-old Nigerian-American woman who was highlighted at Facebook's annual conference in May.

The U.S. takes credit for creating the Internet, and the European Union seems determined to govern it. On Friday, a sweeping new directive goes into effect called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. Taken together, its 99 articles represent the biggest ever change to data privacy laws. The new rules have implications for U.S. Internet users too.

Here are answers to three questions you might have about the new law and its potential impacts.

What is GDPR?

Dan Shefet is an unlikely tech revolutionary. He's not a young math geek who builds driverless cars, nor does he promise to make a tech product for the masses. His crusade is different. The 63-year-old year old Shefet has staged an astonishingly effective campaign in Europe to thwart the torrent of fake news and damaging personal attacks that course through the Internet by taking on the tech giants.

Facebook is rolling out a major change to its News Feed: pushing up news articles that come from "high quality" sources, and pushing down the others. The move signals that, in an effort to combat the problem of fake news, the social media giant is willing to play a kind of editorial role — making decisions based on substance, not just how viral a headline may be.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post to his Facebook page:

It was the summer of 2016, and M was worried her ex-husband was stalking her. She would get out of town and stay with friends. But, as she noted in court documents, her ex seemed to know exactly where she was and whom she visited — down to the time of day and street.

M started to change the way she drove — slowing down, driving in circles — in case a private investigator was following her. She didn't see one. Then she went online and learned about GPS trackers — small devices you can slip into a car to monitor where it goes 24/7. She looked for one and couldn't find any.