Daily Digest 3/13/2018 (Digital Divide)

[Speech] You are a force for optimism—and I want to harness your energies this morning to help solve what I call the Homework Gap. After I talk about that, I’ll follow up with a few thoughts about other matters of interest before the Federal Communications Commission. School-aged kids without broadband access at home are not only unable to complete their homework, they enter the job market with a serious handicap. I have some ideas—and that’s where you come in. First, let’s do something simple. Let’s gather local data and raise awareness. After all, we will never manage problems we do not measure. The good news is that some cities, school districts, and non-profits are already getting this work underway. Second, we need to take note of the innovative things that are happening across the country to help address this problem—and then no shame, copy them. Finally, there are a wide range of cities and towns doing something distinctly low-tech to increase high-tech access. They’re making maps. 

[Press release] The number of mayors pledging to refuse to do business with online gatekeepers has grown to 12 since New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled MayorsForNetNeutrality.org on March 11. Mayor De Blasio is now working with Free Press and others to get more US mayors to sign the Cities Open Internet Pledge. By signing on, mayors agree to require that all internet providers that do business with their cities follow strong Net Neutrality principles. Participating mayors reject the Federal Communications Commission’s unpopular 2017 decision to strip internet users of Net Neutrality protections and vow to use their collective power — both economic and political — to restore online rights. Signers agree that their cities will only do business with “companies that do not block, throttle, or provide paid prioritization of content on sites that cities run to provide critical services and information to their residents,” according to the pledge. Of note: New York City's "The Truth in Broadband RFI" seeks technical insight and policy guidance for monitoring net neutrality and other network performance issues through the use of regular diagnostic tests that would not require special authorization from the providers themselves. Responses are due March 16. 

[Commentary] Exactly two years ago, I predicted in a lengthy post that eight major Internet policy initiative undertaken by the Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler would fall victim, sooner rather than later, to legal and political challenges. As of last week, all of them have now been sent down the memory hole, including the agency’s radical 2015 decision to “reclassify” broadband Internet as a public utility, subject to a small mountain of rules developed in the 1930’s for the former Bell monopoly. It didn’t take much in the way of fortune-telling skills to get this right.  The Commission’s lawyers knew from the beginning that many if not all of Wheeler's efforts to extend the agency's regulatory authority over the broadband ecosystem had little if any basis in law.  In the end, two of the eight were quickly overturned by courts.  One was explicitly nullified by Congress.  Three failed when then-Chairman Wheeler was unable to secure the support even of fellow Democratic Commissioners. Under the US Constitution, even good intentions can’t substitute for clear legal authority. [Larry Downes is the Project Director at Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.]

Reddit is made up of more than a million individual communities, or subreddits, some of which have three subscribers, some twenty million. But, no matter how neutral a platform may seem, there’s always a person behind the curtain. Is it possible to facilitate a space for open dialogue without also facilitating hoaxes, harassment, and threats of violence? Where is the line between authenticity and toxicity? What if, after technology allows us to reveal our inner voices, what we learn is that many of us are authentically toxic?

[Commentary] It seems as if you are never “hard core” enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. It promotes, recommends and disseminates videos in a manner that appears to constantly up the stakes. Given its billion or so users, YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century. This is not because a cabal of YouTube engineers is plotting to drive the world off a cliff. A more likely explanation has to do with the nexus of artificial intelligence and Google’s business model. (YouTube is owned by Google.) For all its lofty rhetoric, Google is an advertising broker, selling our attention to companies that will pay for it. The longer people stay on YouTube, the more money Google makes. In effect, YouTube has created a restaurant that serves us increasingly sugary, fatty foods, loading up our plates as soon as we are finished with the last meal. This state of affairs is unacceptable but not inevitable. There is no reason to let a company make so much money while potentially helping to radicalize billions of people, reaping the financial benefits while asking society to bear so many of the costs.

[Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina]

As the US government gets set to fight AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner in a DC federal court, the Department of Justice March 9 submitted a trial brief that sharpens its theories on why the $85 billion merger deserves to be blocked. Justice Department officials say the outcome of the case "will chart the course for the future of video-content delivery in the United States" and are also ridiculing the other side's response. Claiming that the merging parties would "have the incentive and ability to substantially lessen competition by withholding or raising the price for" content is one thing, but what does the government specifically think will happen should the merger pass the judge's scrutiny?  First, the government will attempt to prove that cable and satellite customers can expect their monthly bills to rise. The government is also suggesting that the merger would harm competition by constraining AT&T's rivals from effectively using HBO as a competitive tool. Perhaps most controversially, the government contends that with two vertically integrated conglomerates in the media space — AT&T/Time Warner and Comcast/NBCUniversal — there could be "coordination" between the two to disadvantage emerging virtual rivals. Dish Sling and PlayStation Vue are singled out as posing a particular threat to AT&T's DirecTV and U-verse services.

[Commentary] There is no shortage of explainers detailing President Donald Trump’s limited ability to mess with the First Amendment. No, he can’t just snap his fingers and “open up” our libel laws so that he can more easily sue news outlets that publish scoops about him. No, he can’t just shut down a large broadcast network whose reporting he doesn’t like. There’s a lot of bluster in the president’s widely disseminated attacks on the press. “But as we approach the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration,” wrote Politico magazine’s Jack Shafer last November, “we discover that the president’s gibbering about the alleged menace posed by the press has been followed by no action.” At a recent event organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association, President Trump’s anti-media rhetoric — including his frequent invocations of “fake news” — drew something short of outrage and incredulity from a panel of journalists. Peter Baker, who has two decades of experience covering the White House, said, “The people who say this has a broad impact on society and the credibility of the media and so forth and so on, I get their point.” He continued: “I don’t dispute that. In terms of my job, worried about working as a reporter in the White House, it doesn’t have that much impact. I mean, it’s just theater.” [Erik Wemple]