March 2017

[Commentary] When it comes to using your data from Web browsing and app usage, the Federal Trade Commission has been the regulatory cop on the beat. Determined to be relevant in the digital economy, the Federal Communications Commission created its own, radically different set of privacy regulations targeting just Internet service providers. By requiring an Internet service provider’s customers to give permission for their data to be used, the FCC’s new privacy rules subject ISPs to a different and more restrictive set of regulations than their online advertising rivals.

If and when the FCC’s new privacy rules are overruled, the statute that empowers the agency to police privacy abuses by ISPs will still apply. And nothing prevents the FCC from designing a different (and more symmetric) regulatory standard. Repeal of the FCC’s new rules will simply restore the regulatory environment that existed for more than 18 months between its reclassification decision and its privacy rules. Given the myriad layers of protections and regulatory options, the notion that repeal would leave the ISPs without any privacy regulator is patently false.

[Hal Singer is a principal at Economists Incorporated and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the media of being “accomplices” to Russia's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. “I think the press were accomplices in the undermining of our election by the Russians by not pointing out this stuff [the e-mails] is worthless,” Rep Pelosi said. “Because it comes from an undermining of our election, or at least reminding the public where this — these e-mails, the leaking of these e-mails came from.”

Some instantly saw a media double standard. The press was apoplectic when President Trump labeled it the “enemy of the American people,” after all. So now that Rep Pelosi was apparently charging it with a crime against American democracy and aiding an adversarial foreign power, why no outcry? One of the reasons for the disparate reactions is that Rep Pelosi's accusation doesn't require that the press willingly worked against the American people. Being an accomplice doesn't require you to collude or act deliberately; there is such thing as an “unwitting accomplice.” So when the press sees Rep Pelosi call it an accomplice, it registers more as a criticism of its choices rather than its loyalties — as Trump's “enemy” comment does.

Facebook has begun flagging fake news. Or as Facebook calls it: "disputed" news. A warning label is being slapped on articles that clearly have no basis in fact or reality — at least some of them. The giant social network first promised to roll out a "disputed" tag in December. Among the disputed offenders that people spotted on Facebook: A fictionalized story "Trump's Android Device Believed To Be Source of Recent White House Leaks" from a fictional publication "The Seattle Tribune." The story carried a disputed label with links to fact-checking services that explained why it was not true. The website has a disclaimer that it is a "news and entertainment satire web publication." But the story fooled people anyway.

The "disputed" tag is part of Facebook's grand plan to crack down on fake news as the company tries to tamp down the controversy over its role in the spread of misinformation that sharpened political divisions and inflamed discourse during and after the presidential election.