Digital Inclusion
WASHINGTON, January 24, 2020 – Panelists at a Next Century Cities event on Thursday clashed on the appropriate federal role in the regulation of digital privacy, but generally agreed on the importance of minimizing algorithmic bias in targeting a particular racial or ethnic group. The panel began wi
FTC
WASHINGTON, January 14, 2020 – Google’s decision to require all content creators for YouTube to designate whether their videos are intended for children is negatively impacting online free speech, a bevy of influencers said at a TechFreedom event on Monday. The market-oriented non-profit organized p
Antitrust
WASHINGTON, September 25, 2019 – A Senate Judiciary subcommittee devoted to antitrust on Tuesday grilled witnesses about what appeared to a dearth of startups, and also expressed concern about a lack of antitrust enforcement. Determining which acquisitions are beneficial and which aren’t is not as e
Justice
WASHINGTON, September 17, 2019 – Congress on Tuesday put a spotlight on federal antitrust investigators scrutinizing Google and Facebook, as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee honed in on whether the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission were wasting efforts by investigating the
Justice
WASHINGTON, September 10, 2019 – The political world is all abuzz about breaking up big tech companies, but the overly broad breakup remedies being proposed by many are inconsistent with antitrust law as articulated by the Supreme Court, said Taylor Owings, counsel to the Assistant Attorney General
Free Speech
WASHINGTON, August 20, 2019 — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been termed one of the most important and most misunderstood laws governing the internet. In recent months, prominent critics from both sides of the aisle have called for the statute to either be repealed or altered so s
FCC
Public Knowledge, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and TechFreedom on Friday pushed back at the Trump Administration’ reported Executive Order that would appear to require the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to monitor speech on social platforms. Fol
Broadband Mapping and Data
Broadband technologies are getting better and faster, but access is still concentrated in metro and suburban areas, Kim Hart and Sara Fischer report in Axios. Despite efforts to narrow the digital divide, rural areas, small towns and low-income neighborhoods in big cities still struggle to have acce
FCC
Cloudflare, an online service that helps websites mitigate DDoS attacks, will be terminating its services for the forum 8chan following the El Paso shooting, the Verge reports. This opens the site to potential attacks that could shut it down entirely. “While removing 8chan from our network takes hea
FTC
WASHINGTON, July 31, 2019 — The Justice Department’s recently announced settlement on the T-Mobile/Sprint merger has drawn widespread criticism, even though the agreement maintains four nationwide carriers by drawing Dish Network into the marketplace. Dish has fiercely defended its ability to quickl
FTC
Third party websites that use Facebook’s “Like” button can be held liable for processing personal user data and transmitting it to Facebook, according to the European Union’s top court. The owner of a website can be held jointly responsible for “the collection and transmission to Facebook of the per
WASHINGTON, July 25, 2019 — The efficacy of antitrust enforcement against big tech companies was energetically debated at an Internet Governance Forum conference on Thursday. The current consumer welfare standard sufficiently supports robust antitrust merger analysis, claimed Keith Klovers, an attor
Congress
WASHINGTON, July 24, 2019 — The Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday details of its $5 billion settlement with Facebook over privacy violations such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In addition to the fine, the company will have to provide quarterly compliance reports and form an indep
WASHINGTON, July 23, 2019 — Facebook, Amazon, and Apple stocks dropped on Tuesday after reports of a broad antitrust review of big tech by the U.S. Department of Justice surfaced. The review will “consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about sea
FTC
WASHINGTON, July 22, 2019 — With great power comes great responsibility. And now Google, which insists that it is not slanting search results based upon political leanings, is under attack from both the left and the right. At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing last Tuesday — titled “Google and
FCC
On Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai urging the agency to utilize public input to fix broadband coverage maps. “The FCC’s maps are still woefully inaccurate, and they are hurting the economy and the people of West Virginia,” said
