Tiffany Hsu

The internet was spewing racist and sexist attacks long before Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) began her presidential campaign, including when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sought the job. Since the last major election, however, it has become even more noxious—and more central to American politics. In 2008, then-Sen Obama (D-IL) Obama faced an ecosystem in which Facebook had millions of users, not billions, and the iPhone was just a year old. In 2016, Clinton’s campaign monitored a handful of social media platforms, not dozens.

In 2017, Facebook said it was testing a new way of selling online advertising that would threaten Google’s control of the digital ad market. But less than two years later, Facebook did an about-face and said it was joining an alliance of companies backing a similar effort by Google.

A group of attorneys general from 10 states filed a federal lawsuit in a bid to block a proposed merger between the wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint, a $26 billion deal that has yet to receive the Justice Department’s approval. The lawsuit, led by Letitia James of New York and Xavier Becerra of California, contends that competition will suffer and consumer prices will rise if the companies combine. Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin joined the complaint, which was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, figures prominently in the annals of antitrust law. Since the late 19th century, under various names and configurations, the entity once known as Ma Bell has often been targeted by regulators trying to rein in its size and keep it from amassing monopoly power.  On the afternoon of June 12, a federal judge is expected to issue a ruling in AT&T’s latest battle with the Justice Department, which is attempting to block the company’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, tried to get ahead of a week of intense scrutiny for him and his company by visiting several top lawmakers in Washington and reiterating how sorry he was for the social network’s failings. He held several meetings with leaders of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees. He also posted testimony apologizing for Facebook’s role in false news, data privacy leaks and foreign interference in elections, as his company announced that it would form an independent commission of academic researchers to study social media’s impact on elections.

David Callicott needs to be online to run his small company, GoodLight Natural Candles in San Francisco.  A proposal on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission would undo so-called net neutrality rules that barred high-speed internet service providers from adjusting website delivery speeds and charging customers extra for access.