As part of the working group efforts within the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), one subcommittee has collected data on telecommunication pole attachment rates and published the information along with some very early data analysis.
More than 100 US mayors have signed on to the Cities Open Internet Pledge requiring all internet providers that do business with participating cities to adhere to strong Net Neutrality principles. The effort was launched during the SXSW conference in March when Mayors Bill de Blasio of New York City, Steve Adler of Austin (TX) and Ted Wheeler of Portland (OR) released the pledge and urged fellow mayors to sign on.
In London, Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, faced more than four hours of questions from a British parliamentary committee over the company’s data-collection techniques, oversight of app developers, fake accounts, political advertising and links to the voter-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica. If American politicians have been lampooned for being Luddites, the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has built a reputation for thoroughness and detailed questioning.
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep James Hines (D-CT) testified before the House Judiciary Committee about alleged online censorship of conservative speech. The hearing was on "Filtering Practices of Social Media Platforms" and stemmed in part from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress recently. The first two panelists were members of Congress, and as such only presented statements and were not questioned afterward.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wasn't predicting when the FCC's vetting of the Sinclair-Tribune deal would be complete, but suggested that the FCC had not yet had a chance to fully evaluate it. Sinclair filed its latest, and expected to be last, amendment to the deal earlier during the week of April 23.
In March, Quinnipiac University’s pollsters asked Americans if they thought certain news outlets — unnamed by Quinnipiac — were enemies of the American people? Nearly 4-in-10 said yes — including more than 8-in-10 Republicans. In a poll released April 26, Quinnipiac was more direct. Less than a quarter of the public says that the news media broadly is better described as “enemy of the people” than an “important part of democracy.” But among Republicans, more than half preferred the former term to the latter. Granted, there was a limited set of options from which to choose.
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