Politico

Former FCC Chairman Wheeler wants to steal Big Tech’s moves

In his new book “Techlash: Who Makes The Rules In The Digital Age?”, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler says regulators have failed to rein in Big Tech because they’re using outdated tools. Call it something like “regulatory futurism”—Wheeler is saying now is the time for the government to get innovative by setting up new agencies with wide-reaching powers to determine what is and isn’t in the public’s best interest when it comes to tech.

Welcome to the information blender

Seemingly from the first moments that members of Hamas began their attacks over the weekend, murdering and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli civilians, the internet erupted into a state of informational chaos. Different posts and platforms offered competing versions of what was happening on the ground. Horrific images and videos proliferated.

This 26-year-old federal fund evolved to fight the ‘digital divide.’ Now a court might throw it out.

Over the past 26 years, the Universal Service Fund — a federal subsidy pool collected monthly from American telephone customers — has spent close to $9 billion a year to give Americans better phone and internet connections, wiring rural communities in Arkansas, inner-city neighborhoods in Chicago, and public libraries and schools across the country. Now it faces the biggest crisis of its existence, and Congress appears paralyzed in the effort to fix it.