Government & Communications

Attention-grabbing warnings of artificial intelligence's existential threats have eclipsed what many experts and researchers say is a much more imminent risk: A near-certain rise in misinformation. The struggle to separate fact from fiction online didn't start with the rise of generative AI — but the red-hot new technology promises to make misinformation more abundant and more compelling. By some estimates, AI-generated content 

The US Justice Department asked a federal judge to stay his sweeping injunction barring many government interactions with social media companies on free-speech grounds, arguing that it was vague, confusing and likely to be overturned on appeal. “The Court’s July 4 preliminary injunction is both sweeping in scope and vague in its terms,” lawyers led by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote in a filing before US District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana, citing rules that require the document to make clear “exactly what conduct is proscribed.” The government team ask

Meta’s new microblogging app Threads is emerging as a potential threat to Twitter’s lock on politicians and political observers seeking real-time news and debate.  Most Twitter competitors have struggled to match the size and bipartisanship of its user base, but Threads is garnering significant participation from both parties.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will regularly post Digital Equity plans on this website. If you’re unsure about when your state’s digital equity plan will be available for public comment, we recommend bookmarking the link and checking it frequently. The public comment period is a mandatory step in the State Digital Equity Plan process that solicits a public response and comments on the draft plan. To know when to expect your

Two months after President Biden took office, his top digital adviser emailed officials at Facebook urging them to do more to limit the spread of “vaccine hesitancy” on the social media platform. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials held “weekly sync” meetings with Facebook, once emailing the company 16 “misinformation” posts. And in the summer of 2021, the surgeon general’s top aide repeatedly urged Google, Facebook and Twitter to do more to combat disinformation.

One day after a Louisiana federal judge set limits on the Biden administration’s communications with tech firms, the US State Department canceled its regular meeting with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats. State Department officials said all future meetings, which had been held monthly, have been “canceled pending further guidance." The cancellation shows the immediate impact of the order by US District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee.

Big Tech’s enforcement of various official truths that turned out to be false has undermined trust in both the leading tech companies and society overall. In addition to their own content moderators, four other organizational entities have been used to determine misinformation, disinformation, and so-called malinformation.  All four have serious shortcomings:

Judge Terry Doughty of the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana restricted parts of the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) is calling on Wisconsin households to share their internet experience to help direct recently announced broadband funding.

Video streamers and other edge providers are fighting a multi-front war in Washington lately, as Congress applies pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to apply good-faith negotiation rules to over-the-top content providers, as it does traditional video providers, and as hundreds of rural broadband providers and associations call on the agency to make edge providers contribute to broadband buildout subsidies. The FCC wrestled with the issue of how and whether to regulate th