July 2019

Consumer advocates are pushing for the Federal Trade Commission to come down hard on YouTube’s handling of children’s videos after conversations with the agency’s leadership prompted concerns about how regulators would be approaching a settlement with the video-sharing site. The Center for Digital Democracy and the Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood sent a letter to the FTC, urging the FTC to force YouTube to separate the children’s videos from the rest of the platform in order to better crack down on illegal data collection of younger viewers.

A few years ago, Tuttle (OK) suddenly found itself without cable or internet service after a local broadband provider went bankrupt, leaving behind unpaid bills to the power company. Like the majority of cities in the US, Tuttle residents accessed broadband through private companies rather than through a city-run system. With the town of a few thousand growing quickly and attracting professionals from nearby Oklahoma City who were used to high-speed internet, Tuttle city officials began meeting with new private telecommunications companies to fill the gap.