By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-2-21 House Energy & Commerce Committee Democratic leaders have fired off new letters to the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Google as part of an investigation into Big Tech's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters are in response to news reports of COVID-19 misinformation/disinformation on their platforms and [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-2-21 The FCC has told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that China Telecom Americas' appeal of the FCC's launch of a revocation proceeding against the company is premature. That is because the launch of a proceeding is not an appealable final decision, it told the [...]
By Mike Farrell, Multichannel News, 2-2-21 Comcast is doubling down on its efforts to bring affordable broadband service to underserved communities, including beefing up speeds for customers of its Internet Essentials product, accelerating the rollout of its Lift Zones program, and funding organizations working for social justice and equality through digital equity grants. “We’ve [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-1-21 Facebook's oversight board said it will be soliciting comment on the platform's decision to indefinitely suspend former president Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram. His accounts were pulled Jan. 7 after the Capitol insurrection and his use of his online platform "to condone rather than condemn the actions [...]
By Daniel Frankel, Multichannel News, 1-29-21Perhaps no chief executive lobbied harder than Comcast’s Brian Roberts for the FCC’s 2017 rollback of net neutrality rules under Trump-appointed FCC chief Ajit Pai.Now that Biden appointee Jessica Rosenworcel is running the agency, and another reversal of course on net neutrality seems likely, Roberts was asked during Comcast’s fourth-quarter [...]
By Gary Arlen, Multichannel News, 1-28-21 Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) outlined an aggressive plan to legislate a “competition policy” that she envisions will be accompanied by increased antitrust enforcement, especially in the technology and digital platform sector. In the closing keynote address to the State of the Net conference on Wednesday, she voiced concern [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 1-27-21 Some civil rights groups are using the first days of the new Biden Administration as an "inflection point" to bend the arc of tech priorities toward justice and inclusion…. Their agenda includes privacy, content regulation, competition, and broadband, and their goal is a host of reforms made even [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Callahan v. United Network for Organ Sharing. This case concerns the common-law right of access to judicial documents. The underlying suit was brought by certain hospitals and patients against UNOS, [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 1-26-21 A group of academics weighed in on the state of Sec. 230 during the virtual State of the Net conference Tuesday (Jan. 26). Alan Davidson, senior advisor at Mozilla, who hosted the panel, said that while a year ago revoking or revising Sec. 230 was a long shot, [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 1-21-21 Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) have written the heads of Facebook, Twitter, and Google asking them to face up to and fix the "fundamental design features of their social networks that facilitate the spread of extreme, radicalizing content to their users," the sort of radicalizing [...]