Bloomberg

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to move to restore net neutrality rules after President-elect Joe Biden takes office, undoing the agency’s deregulation of the broadband industry during the Trump administration. The key regulatory underpinning would be a reclassification of broadband as a service under Title II of the Communications Act. That reclassification would enable the agency to reinstate rules requiring that companies like AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp.

Four Federal Communications Commission veterans -- including former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, have been tapped for President-elect Joe Biden’s agency transition team. [Editor's note: Mignon Clyburn also sits on the Board of Directors of the Benton Institute.]  The team is led by John Williams who is Senior Counsel and Parliamentarian at the House Judiciary Committee and former Senior Counselor and Senior Agency Official for Privacy at the FCC's Office of the General Counsel.

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said antitrust enforcers need to be worried about dominant companies buying startups that are emerging competitive threats -- highlighting one of the main issues in the agency’s investigation of Facebook. Chairman Joe Simons said that takeovers of nascent competitors can be harmful to consumers and said that enforcers need to be ready to step in to stop such deals.

Bill Russo, a Biden campaign spokesman,  lashed out at Facebook, alleging that the social media giant is “shredding the fabric of our democracy” in the aftermath of the election. “In the days after Election Day, Facebook is flooded with thousands of calls for violence,” Russo said in a tweet. “Some of them are taken down, but many are left up for hours, if not days.” Russo also cited theories about a fraudulent U.S.

A victory by Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election could usher in an abrupt change in the nation’s telecommunications policy, restoring so-called net neutrality regulation and shifting the Republican drive to rein in social media outlets, among other things. Biden hasn’t talked much about the Federal Communications Commission during the campaign, but his party’s platform is specific. It calls for restoring net neutrality rules put in place under then-President Barack Obama when Biden served as vice president and taking a harder line on telecommunications mergers.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google reveals new details about a secretive, multibillion-dollar deal between Google and Apple. The suit targets paid deals Google negotiates to get its search engine to be the default on browsers, phones and other devices. The biggest of these is an agreement that makes Google search the default on iPhones and other Apple devices. The Justice Department said Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai met in 2018 to discuss the deal.