By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-5-21 Senate Democrats are taking aim at social media sites' Section 230 content immunity in a new bill. The Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism and Consumer Harms (SAFE TECH) Act would carve out several categories of content from Web sites' current Section 230 immunity from civil liability for [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-5-21 Republican leadership in the House Energy & Commerce Committee are branding Big Tech a "destructive force" and calling on Democratic committee leadership to hold a hearing immediately with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Republicans have created a Big Tech Accountability [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 2-4-21 Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is introducing a new, Big Tech-targeted, antitrust bill that would block anticompetitive mergers, toughen antitrust enforcement, and seek civil fines and forfeitures. Talking about the bill on CNBC Thursday (Feb. 4), Klobuchar, incoming head of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said the GameStop/Reddit stock manipulation [...]
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 [...]