Op-Ed

The “fake news” wars have reached a new peak. While the president continues to accuse journalists and his opponents of spreading “fake news,” evidence mounts of extensive right-wing disinformation efforts, many aimed at boosting President Doanld Trump and sowing discord among his opponents. The result: Those who cry “fake news” the loudest remain the ones most responsible for circulating it. President Trump and his supporters have dominated the conversation on “fake news” by repackaging a political tactic as old as American democracy itself.

For Americans who can afford reliable phone service, help surviving a natural disaster is just a phone call away. Individuals in the path of a storm can dial 2-1-1 to get answers to non-emergency questions such as the location of shelters and evacuation areas. After the storm has passed, 2-1-1 provides access to disaster resources including food and housing assistance, crisis counseling, and health and human services.

More than 1 million veterans rely on the Lifeline program connecting low-income households to essential services like health care, job opportunities and public safety. Unfortunately, proposed changes from the Federal Communications Commission threaten to undermine this vital program and hurt those who depend on it most. About 40 million people are eligible for Lifeline and roughly 10 million of those have enrolled. Of the enrollees, around 1.3 million (or more than 10 percent) are veterans or disabled veterans living near or below the poverty line.

We have learned a lot about online disinformation — and we are doing nothing.  For these same distorting techniques are still in operation. They will affect the midterm elections. They continue to shape political debate in many countries around the world. They are being used not just by Russians, but by people in the countries they seek to influence. These campaigners, often hiding behind fake accounts, continue to act with impunity, promoting false narratives and relying on the main platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Google, and especially YouTube — to amplify their messages.

There's no better time for state and local governments to get serious about developing proactive approaches to keeping residents connected in the days, months and years following a natural disaster. Among the programs that should be advertised to disaster survivors is the federal Lifeline program, which provides a subsidy that covers all or a portion of the cost of wireless voice and internet services for low-income consumers who qualify.

Most issues look different from rural America, and that’s especially true of internet neutrality. No one doubts that net neutrality policies to keep the internet open and free for all users is vital. No internet provider or tech company should be allowed to block websites, censor or discriminate against viewpoints, manipulate cyberspace to shut out competition or otherwise interfere with our online experience. But for many activists and tech advocates in high-connectivity urban areas, that’s all that net neutrality means. In rural America, however, effective net neutrality means much more.

Officials in Beijing are providing governments around the world with technology and training that enable them to control their own citizens. As Chinese companies compete with their international counterparts in crucial fields such as artificial intelligence and 5G mobile service, the democratic norms that long governed the global Internet are falling by the wayside. When it comes to Internet freedom, many governments are eager to buy the restrictive model that China is selling.

The Federal Trade Commission is tackling a central question of competition: Are the goals of antitrust enforcement in the United States best pursued by applying what’s known as the consumer welfare standard? But what does it mean just to safeguard “consumer” welfare?

When the president’s derogatory rhetoric sparks hostility and even violence, it lays bare a dark side to the United States’ proud liberal approach to speech. The US system offers no obvious way (short of voting a president out of office after four years) to contain a politician whose verbal demonization of rivals and the press provides what some citizens view as a White House invitation to lash out violently against their perceived opponents. Noxious and bigoted attacks are hardly unique to the Donald Trump era.

Over the past several years the Federal Communications Commission has brought sweeping changes to Lifeline, the telecommunications aid program for low-income households. These changes are designed to shift the program’s focus from telephone service to broadband service. Though few would question the need to narrow the digital divide, many (including me) have criticized the way the commission has chosen to do so.