Op-Ed

When you build services that connect billions of people across countries and cultures, you’re going to see all of the good that humanity can do, and you’re also going to see people try to abuse those services in every way possible.

I’m alarmed at the state of our news. Fake news, “real” news, just about all news—the made-up stuff that comes without corroboration and from God knows where; the infotainment masquerading as news from media outlets that should know better; and the tweets and mistruths that spew forth daily from the White House that attempt, with considerable success, to determine what the rest us will talk about on that particular day. Over time, a society deprived of real news and information will begin to make decisions that work against its better interests.

Most critiques of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, focus on his positions on a woman’s right to choose, his extreme deference to presidential power, or his views on sensible gun laws.

State attorneys general (AGs), for better or worse, are increasingly important actors in tech policy. The internet is a greenfield regulatory opportunity, and in the tech policy realm, AGs are flexing their muscle on online privacy, net neutrality, and data security.

It's common knowledge that city curbs are fiercely contested places, what with Ubers and Lyfts hovering inconveniently and blocking traffic; piles of shared bikes and scooters being dropped off and picked up; rapidly climbing numbers of deliveries being made by double-parked trucks; and buses and taxis pulling up—not to mention all the private-car parking going on. These daily dramas will only get more boisterous and difficult in the years to come, when fleets of city-licensed driverless cars join the fray.

Network neutrality activists are having a field day with the recent report that Verizon “throttled” the mobile data usage of the Santa Clara County Fire Prevention District (FPD). What really happened wasn’t a net neutrality issue: The FPD simply chose a data plan for their mobile command and control unit that was manifestly inappropriate for their needs. The FPD needed a lot of high-speed 4G mobile data — up to 300 GB/month when the device was deployed.

President Donald Trump's "The Art of the Deal" tells the tale of how some newspaper stories get written. When Trump Tower was under construction, Trump, according to the book, called up a gossip reporter to claim that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were about to buy an apartment in the building. Buckingham Palace, as a matter of policy, never comments for this type of story—meaning that for a certain kind of reporter keen on a certain kind of story, the tip is a tempting one even if they suspect it’s almost certainly not true.

A barista gets burned at work, buys first-aid cream at Target, and later that day sees a Facebook ad for the same product. In another Target, someone shouts down the aisle to a companion to pick up some Red Bull; on the ride home, Instagram serves a sponsored post for the beverage. A home baker wishes aloud for a KitchenAid mixer, and moments after there’s an ad for one on his phone. Two friends are talking about recent trips to Japan, and soon after one gets hawked cheap flights there.

The untold story of rural broadband is that over the past seven years, independent broadband networks have proliferated. Today, some of the fastest, most affordable internet in the country can be found in small communities. Despite small customer bases and razor-thin (or non-existent) margins, tenacious broadband providers across the country are proving that especially when unencumbered by competition-stifling legislation, they can bring world-class internet to their communities.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and his staff are fond of taking to Twitter to assert that, in the just over two months since the repeal of the FCC’s 2015 network neutrality rules took effect, the “Internet remains free and open” — and that opponents’ concerns that unconstrained broadband providers will act in a way that harms consumers and competition are overblown.