Mike Snider

Technically, Congress can take no action preventing the Federal Communications Commission from voting on Dec 14. Instead, it can only ask the agency to postpone or cancel the vote, and then try to pass a law governing Internet access.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition is threatening to rally Latino leaders against Verizon for its removal of Univision from the Verizon Fios service. Verizon's blackout comes as the country recovers from Hurricane Katia and a pair of earthquakes, all of which hit in September.

Nearly 200,000 people have already commented on network neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission — many likely spurred on by HBO's John Oliver. The comedian and host of the premium pay-TV channel's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver urged viewers to go to the FCC's web site to voice their support for current net neutrality regulations passed in 2015. The FCC had prepared for a new round of public comment after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai began the process of reconsidering the net neutrality rules, which require Internet service providers to treat all legal content equally. When the rules were being debated three years ago, Oliver's encouragement to file comments to the FCC during a June 2014 episode crashed the agency's site. On his latest episode, which debuted Sunday night, Oliver urged viewers with a Shakespearean, "once more into the breach." They apparently responded, with net neutrality comments rising from about 30,000 Monday morning to more than 184,650 by midday May 9.

A big reason current network neutrality rules need to get the boot, says Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, is that they're curbing broadband investment in low-income neighborhoods — cutting off important information and services 21st-century citizens access via high-speed Internet. But were these 2015 rules, which aimed to prevent companies that bring Internet into homes from favoring their own content over others, really the culprit?

A review of broadband investment over the past two years paints a more complicated picture. One study of the largest carriers, the basis Pai’s claim, does show investment fell over the two-year period the rules were in effect. But that was largely due to AT&T. It's blamed the Open Internet rules for decreased broadband investment. Analysts point out, however, that like other large carriers it was engaged in a competitive shift that likely played a role — two mammoth acquisitions including the $85.4 billion deal for Time Warner. At the same time, Comcast — another big spender of broadband investment — increased its outlays by double digits. "You are going to hear a lot of posturing when it comes to the attempts to stifle some of those regulations," said Tuna Amobi, an equity analyst at CFRA Research who tracks companies such as Comcast and Charter Communications (which want the rules repealed) and Netflix (which supports them).

"What we saw ultimately was that, frankly, it was more or less a lot of noise," Amobi said. The market is simply too competitive not to invest, he says. "No one wants to be left behind."

Your trust in news shared over social media may depend more on the person who shared the news than the news source itself, new research suggests. The results suggest opportunities for news organizations in building strong online followings -- and challenges for social media in countering fake news. An online sample of 1,489 US adults participated in the experiment, conducted by The Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Those who got the news from a person they trusted were more likely to say the story was well-reported, correct and contained diverse points of view. For instance, 51% of those who got news from a trusted sharer said the information was well-reported and trustworthy, while only 34% said so if they got the news from a non-trusted sharer. Trusted sharers influenced outcomes in other ways, too. When the story is passed on by a trusted figure and the article was attributed to The AP, 52% of respondents said the article got the facts right. When the article was attributed to The AP, but the person passing it on is less trusted, only 32% say the facts were right.

Here's some of what the Federal Communications Commission has done under President Donald Trump:

1. Set aside a key Internet privacy rule. The FCC voted 2-to-1 to temporarily stay a data security regulation within a set of new privacy rules, passed in October 2016. That provision would have subjected Internet service providers (ISPs) to different privacy standards than web sites, apps and other Net players.
2. Ended Zero-Rating Investigation. An FCC report issued before Chairman Tom Wheeler left office in January found that free data plans such as AT&T and Verizon may violate the agency's Net Neutrality rules, officially called the Open Internet rules, passed in 2015. Last month, Pai ended the investigation, saying that the practices enhanced competition and were popular with consumers. But critics called the move an initial offensive on the Net neutrality rules as a whole.
3. Blocked approval of nine companies from Lifeline. Chairman Pai revoked the designation of nine companies as providers to the Lifeline plan, which subsidizes broadband service for low-income Americans. Like the Zero-Rating report, the Lifeline approval was a last-minute action by the Wheeler commission, Pai said at the time, and "should not bind us going forward."
4. Approved broadband and wireless access. The commission over the last month approved $2 billion to improve rural broadband access and $453 million to improve wireless connectivity in rural America and in tribal lands.
5. Made public items on its monthly agenda. Chairman Pai has begun posting the text of items to be considered by the commission on the agency's blog. In the past, Pai and fellow Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly criticized Wheeler for not making agenda items public.
6. Removed the set-top box rule from consideration. Before the first meeting he chaired, Pai removed from the agenda an order that would require pay-TV providers make free apps so subscribers could watch programming without a set-top box.

President Trump has called network neutrality a "top down power grab' by then-President Obama. And new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai cast one of the two votes against the measure. Chairman Pai delivered a fresh sign recently that his take on net neutrality differs from that of his predecessor. On Feb 3, he announced the FCC was closing an investigation into wireless services offering content that doesn't count against data caps — a practice that, depending on your point of view, could be considered a net neutrality violation or a smart business tactic.

To unravel the net neutrality rules further, the FCC could begin drafting new ones or selectively enforce -- or not enforce -- rules on the book. Congress could act, too. What could this mean for consumers? More data-free offerings; Some content flows faster; Some content flows ... not so fast; Competition -- but more or less?

Is the White House purposefully keeping its officials from appearing on CNN? Neither President Trump's special consultant Kellyanne Conway nor Press Secretary Sean Spicer have hit CNN's Sunday morning news talk shows such as State of the Union in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, both of them, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have appeared on other major networks' shows during that time. Spicer denied that CNN is being frozen out, when asked about it recently.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected Oct 27 to vote on new rules on how Internet service providers (ISPs) can use customer data. Consumer privacy over ISPs' broadband networks came under the purview of the FCC after the agency's adoption in 2015 of network neutrality or Open Internet rules. More than nine out of 10 adults (91%) agree or strongly agree consumers have lost control of their personal data and its use, according to a Pew Research Center report out in Sept. But its updating of Internet consumer privacy rules has vast repercussions when it comes to the accumulation of consumer data profiles and their possible use in advertising and marketing. Companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Google and Verizon have argued the FCC's rules should dovetail with those of the Federal Trade Commission, which handles consumer privacy on Web sites, in apps and any other Net destination.

The Federal Communications Commission's proposed rules to let pay-TV subscribers free themselves from set-top boxes may be in jeopardy. Commissioners are expected to vote Sept 29 at the agency's monthly meeting on the measure, which would require pay-TV providers make free apps available to let subscribers watch programming on other devices without the need of a set-top box. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made the proposal in January and the commission set it in motion a month later by a 3-2 vote. Chairman Wheeler reworked the proposed rules after initial concerns from pay-TV providers and programmers about copyright protections and consumer privacy. However, content companies such as Disney and Time Warner remain concerned about the FCC's involvement in licensing third-party companies, while pay-TV providers and others say that the proposal goes beyond the agency's purview.