Analysis

With great drama, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 became law on December 27, 2021. The $2.3 trillion COVID relief and government spending bill extended unemployment benefits and ensured the government can keep running. The $900 billion COVID relief provision includes over $7 billion to help improve connectivity in the U.S.

Each of the big social platforms handled the challenges of the Trump presidency in its own unique way, scrambling to address or neutralize various urgent and contradictory concerns from users, advertisers, lawmakers and occasionally the president himself.

The actions of Facebook and Twitter to ban President Donald Trump are protected by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Act. This is the same Section 230 behind which social media companies have sheltered to protect them from liability for the dissemination of the hate, lies and conspiracies that ultimately led to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. These actions are better late than never. But the proverbial horse has left the barn.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity of broadband became incontrovertible. Attending school, working from home, visiting a doctor, and accessing government services all relied on reliable broadband connections. For many, bridging the digital divide emerged as an even-more-urgent priority. We’ve tracked the stories that best explain the complexities of the digital divide and the crucial policy responses. Here’s our list. 

When Simon & Schuster canceled its plans this week to publish Senator Josh Hawley’s book, he called the action “a direct assault on the First Amendment.” And when Twitter permanently banned President Trump’s account, his family and his supporters said similar things. “We are living Orwell’s 1984,” Donald Trump Jr.

In the end, two billionaires from California did what legions of politicians, prosecutors and power brokers had tried and failed to do for years: They pulled the plug on President Donald Trump. Permanently suspending Trump's accounts was a watershed moment in the history of social media.

The Biden-Harris “Build Back Better” agenda calls for closing the digital divide. The questions now are: how much funding will this initiative secure from Congress, and how will it be distributed? We believe that the answer will be informed by actions that states, cities, and counties take. As spending proposals are released, debated, approved, and then designed as Federally administered programs, the next few months will be a critical period for local governments.

To connect those most in need most often means connecting people to networks that already exist. That’s why it’s important to expose how the Federal Communications Commission’s rush to build new broadband networks has resulted in wasteful spending. Though I believe solving the rural-deployment problem is important, the roots of that problem are different from the root causes of the digital divide that plagues urban areas.

In order to move quickly but also deliver a successful and efficient Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, the Commission should make its decisions with the following principles in mind:

More than nine months after the national COVID-19 emergency was declared, Congress has directed the Federal Communications Commission to create an emergency broadband benefit, a monthly discount on broadband internet access service for low-income people. On January 4, the FCC released a Public Notice asking for comment on how to best implement this new program which Congress expects to be up and running in the next two months. Here's a look at what the FCC is asking.