David McCabe

People buying Google ads related to candidates in US federal elections will have to prove they are US citizens or lawful permanent residents beginning July 10. Under Google’s new rules, people or groups who want to advertise in elections will have to go through a process that includes producing a “government-issued ID” as well as other information, like a Federal Election Commission identification number and an IRS Employer Identification Number. Google says it aims to confirm that buyers are who they say they are and can legally participate in American elections.

Facebook, despite years of outreach to conservatives, remains a punching bag for the right. Facebook’s lukewarm relationship with the right has complicated its search for DC allies to help fend off new privacy regulations. On April 24, the company announced it had replaced the head of its Washington office with Kevin Martin, former Republican Federal Communications Commission chairman. Facebook is bracing for another beating — this time, from some conservatives at a hearing featuring pro-Trump video stars Diamond and Silk, who say Facebook discriminated against their content.

No federal law spells out what companies trading in personal information can do with user data. No federal agency has clear jurisdiction over writing rules for internet companies. And public concern about personal data falling into the wrong hands has only recently swelled. Now lawmakers are feeling the heat.

Former Federal Trade Commission consumer protection enforcers say Facebook's response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal won't be enough to keep federal investigators at bay. "Just because they make changes moving forward doesn’t mean they can’t be investigated or sued for what they did before," said Jessica Rich, who stepped down as the head of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau in 2017.

A Q&A with Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission.

Lawsuits looking to strike down the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of its own network neutrality rules will be heard in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Unless they don't. Some or all of the plaintiffs could push to move the arguments to the DC Circuit, where the case against the net neutrality rules was litigated. The lottery to decide the location of the court arguments was the result of lawsuits filed against the FCC in different jurisdictions. 

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission says every route should be pursued to restore network neutrality rules, from the courts to Congress. But she didn't say which she thought would be most likely to succeed because she thinks "it's important for all of the sectors and these points and these avenues to be addressed," she said.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) launched an attack on the market power of large tech companies. "I’m not looking for a lot of regulation, I’m looking for responsibility," Chairman Walden said. "If responsibility doesn’t flow, then regulation will." Chairman Walden raised multiple areas for possible regulation:

Billionaire investor George Soros launched a brutal attack on big online platform companies at 2018’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Now, his influential organization is "certainly examining new ways" to tackle the growing power of tech giants. With a global reach and an annual budget of more than a billion dollars, the Open Society Foundations has the ability to significantly shape the growing debate over the power of Big Tech.

Tech industry critics spent a daylong event on Capitol Hill Feb 7 airing concerns that Facebook, Google, Apple and other major companies are peddling addictive products that damage young minds. Critics are seeking some sort of policy to address the problem. “Should there be some common sense regulation of the tech industry? Obviously,” said Jim Steyer, the head of Common Sense, the group that organized the conference. Franklin Foer, the author of a recent book critical of tech powerhouses, said that a “sense of shame” would shift norms in the industry.