1. Monthly archive
  2. April 2019

April 2019

The Consequences of a Broadband Deployment Report With Flawed Data

The Federal Communications Commission is required by law to initiate a notice of inquiry and report annually on whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. This annual broadband report is incredibly important because the findings and conclusions are designed to help Congress and the FCC develop policies that ensure all Americans have robust broadband access. Reports with inaccurate data on broadband availability can skew the findings and prevent unserved and underserved areas from gaining access to broadband.

Facebook while black: Users call it getting 'Zucked,' say talking about racism is censored as hate speech

Black activists say hate speech policies and content moderation systems formulated by a company built by and dominated by white men fail the very people Facebook claims it's trying to protect. Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled, Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaigns targeting black users, they say. Many of these users now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared.

Satellite Providers Sidestep Hill Request for Subscriber data

DirecTV owner AT&T and DISH Network both dodged giving specific breakdowns to House Judiciary Committee leaders about how many subscribers rely on a satellite law involving the importation of broadcast signals, which expires Dec. 31, 2019. The key justification in private responses: “competitively sensitive.” Lawmakers want this data as they debate whether to reauthorize the expiring satellite law, known as STELAR. “The total number of DISH and DirecTV subscribers that currently receive one or more stations through a distant signal license … are approximately 870,000,” DISH wrote.

Trump 5G Fighter Heads to Fox

The White House is losing a champion of the free-market approach to 5G to the new Fox Corporation’s Washington office. Gail Slater, a special assistant to the president on tech, telecom, and cybersecurity, will leave her role in the administration and join Fox as a senior vice president of policy and strategy. Slater was on the front lines in a fight between administration officials and Trump allies over the future of 5G networks.

Biden on Tech

Former Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) will be vying for the White House in a very different tech climate than what he experienced in the Obama era. In the short time since Biden was in office, tech phobia has replaced tech euphoria, and the networks once viewed as connectors of the world are now among its most divisive forces. When Biden became vice president in 2009, the companies that now represent “big tech” were only a few years removed from being scrappy startups, and several of them quickly became chummy with the Obama White House.

Supreme Court should rule on a risk to innovation

The Supreme Court is considering whether to weigh in on a defining battle of the digital era. The court is about to decide what happens next in Oracle v. Google — a case that will affect not just the apps on your smartphone, but the future of American software innovation. The case hinges on whether developers should be able to create new applications using standard ways of accessing common functions. Those functions are the building blocks of computer programming, letting developers easily assemble the range of applications and tools we all use every day.

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