Though network neutrality started off more than a decade ago as an insight into how to make networks work most efficiently, it has taken on much larger social and political dimensions lately. The issue has emerged as an anti-monopoly rallying point and even a focus for "resistance" to the Trump Administration. "Any time the cable companies and the Trump administration are on one side, it looks good for companies to be on the other side," Boston Law School professor Daniel Lyons said. Once President Donald Trump took office, net neutrality became one of his first targets as part of broader government deregulation. The Federal Communications Commission Chairman he appointed, Ajit Pai, made rollback a top priority. And thus net neutrality became increasingly political.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai demanded that the phone industry adopt a robust call authentication system to combat illegal caller ID spoofing and launch that system no later than 2019. Such a system is critical to protecting Americans from scam robocalls. A robust call authentication framework would erode the ability of callers to illegally spoof their Caller ID, which scam artists use to trick Americans into answering their phones when they shouldn’t. With a robust framework in place, consumers and law enforcement alike could more readily identify the source of illegal robocalls and reduce their impact. And the Commission is considering additional actions—such as authorizing voice providers to block the delivery of unsigned or improperly signed calls to consumers—that would stem the flow of illegally spoofed robocalls to American consumer.

Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world. The inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet. The contract outlines central principles that will be built into a full contract and published in May 2019, when half of the world’s population will be able to get online. More than 50 organisations have already signed the contract, which is published by Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation alongside a report that calls for urgent action.  Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a “Magna Carta for the web”, governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online “freely, safely and without fear.” Meanwhile, companies commit to making the internet affordable and accessible to all; respecting consumer privacy and personal data; and developing technologies that ensure the web is “a public good that puts people first”.

For Louis Brandeis, antitrust would serve both social and economic goals. He saw complete harmony in critiquing the economic justification for corporate power, on terms familiar to modern antitrust analysis, while pressing the larger case for democracy and industrial liberty. Legislatures can, and should, take an expansive view. As a starting point, Brandeis believed that values other than economics would be served by the protection of competition through antitrust, chief among them the preservation of democracy and individual initiative. This was not a subtle view. He went so far as to say that “we cannot maintain democratic conditions in America if we allow organizations to arise in our midst with the power of the [U.S.] Steel Corporation.” For Brandeis, democracy was more than just the ability to cast a vote; it rested on the ability of Americans to participate fully in the industrialized economy. When he described the harm from monopoly, Brandeis bemoaned the passage of the day when “nearly every American boy could look forward to becoming independent as a farmer or mechanic, in business or in professional life.” Brandeis saw this “industrial liberty” as integral to political liberty. He held a Jeffersonian view of the world, believing “that in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” This was a view shaped by his times–the populist opposition to the power of the trusts in the late 19^th and early 20th century and then the arrival of the Great Depression, when he warned of the “gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income which giant corporations have fostered.”

An Oct 23 interview with Sen Mark Warner (D-VA).

In the summer of 2018, Sen Warner put out the most comprehensive plan yet for how Congress might regulate Big Tech. His white paper laid out 20 different suggestions, ranging from labeling bots to implementing broader rules like those in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). When asked, "In your white paper, something you didn’t bring up was breaking up Facebook. Why didn’t you include that?" Sen Warner said, "I’ve thought about that. I think in many ways, these companies have as much power, if not more power, than the largest enterprises in the beginning of the 20th century, when you have the oil companies and other monopolies...I see breakup as more of a last resort. Also, we could look at companies more on a domestic scene...In a world-based economy, you can’t look at these only on a national basis. My fear is that the Chinese companies, which are frankly on a growth rate even faster than Facebook, Google, and Twitter’s growth, don’t have any of the constraints of the other companies." Sen Warner also indicated he was against nationalizing large tech companies.