House Passes Reconciliation Bill, State AGs Investigate Instagram, Broadband’s Q3 Rebound

November 19, 2021 – The House of Representatives on Friday passed President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion social safety net and climate bill by a 220 to 213 margin that largely followed party lines.

The bill faced unanimous Republican opposition, and saw Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, become the only member of his party to vote against its passage due to his concern over the bill’s increase of the federal deduction for state and local taxes paid.

The package’s passage – which has been dubbed the Build Back Better bill – comes after months of battle between Democrats over specifics of the bill’s provisions.

The bill still must pass the Senate by a simple majority, not subject to filibuster, as a budget reconciliation measure. Efforts to reach an agreement on bill content between House and Senate Democrats before either chamber voted were abandoned amid the party’s protracted infighting.

Changes to the bill in the Senate are expected given the high-profile and much-in-the-public-eye criticism from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., or Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. Because the chamber is evenly divided between Republicans and senators caucusing with the Democrats, all Democratic votes are necessary – together with the tie-breaking vote by Vice President Kamala Harris, to pass the measure.

State attorneys general inquiry into Instagram

A bipartisan group of 11 state attorneys general has opened an investigation into Meta over body image issues Instagram is believed to cause in teenagers.

The investigation is based off revelations in the Facebook Papers which show survey data suggesting around a third of teenage girls who already feel bad about their bodies feel even worse after using Instagram.

AGs’ investigation is being conducted from the angle of whether Meta has “violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.”

The Facebook Papers, which detail struggles at the company to deal with misinformation, addiction and user manipulation, were first reported on by The Wall Street Journal in October with the help of whistle-blower Frances Haugen.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, while members of Congress have proposed and introduced legislation that combatting the power of the big tech companies, including Google, Amazon and Apple.

Meta has contested reporting on its alleged issues, saying the Facebook Papers were poorly interpreted in public reporting and that the company proactively combats content issues on its platform.

Sense of normalcy for broadband addition numbers

Broadband additions decreased to pre-pandemic levels in Q3 of 2021, says Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.

The largest U.S. cable and wireline phone providers, representing around 96% of the market, acquired approximately 630,000 net additional broadband internet subscribers in Q3.

1.525 million net subscribers were gained in Q3 of 2020, 615,000 during the same period in 2019 and 600,000 during 2018’s same time period.

These 2021 numbers account for about 41% of their respective 2020 figures.

These top broadband providers now count approximately 107.9 million subscribers.

Leichtman Research Group is a New Hampshire-based specialist broadband, media and entertainment industry research and analysis firm.