Daily Digest 4/27/2018 (The New FTC)

The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its net neutrality rules in December 2017. “The backlash to the repeal was overwhelming from internet users across the political spectrum. It led to a situation where we’re actually on the offense and we have this incredible tool, a powerful tool, somewhat of a blunt instrument, that Congress can use to block the FCC’s incredibly unpopular decision and keep these rules in place,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of internet advocacy group Fight for the Future. “It’s kind of the perfect mission for the internet.” Greer continued: “I think this is a pivotal moment. This is really the moment to rally the internet to fight.” The Senate will consider use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the ban. The choice for lawmakers is being highlighted online for voters to see. Internet activists are trying to help drum up support online by making it clear how every lawmaker is intending to vote on the net neutrality CRA. Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press Action Fund, a trio of internet rights advocacy groups, created an online scoreboard that shows which lawmakers have voiced their support for the CRA. The scoreboard also lets people select their state so they can see if their local lawmakers have supported the CRA or not. As of April 24, the scoreboard says nearly 1.3 million calls have been made to lawmakers about the net neutrality CRA, with a handful of lawmakers—such as House Speaker Paul Ryan—getting more than 20,000 calls. But the scoreboard isn’t the only plans activists have for attracting attention to the CRA.

A California bill that would impose the nation's strictest net neutrality law has been approved by another state Senate committee, bringing it closer to passage. The California Senate Judiciary committee approved the bill April 24 in a 5-2 vote, with Democrats supporting the net neutrality rules and Republicans opposing them. The bill was also approved recently by the California Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee despite protests from AT&T and cable lobbyists. AT&T complained in last week's committee hearing that the bill "goes well beyond the FCC order of 2015."  The California net neutrality bill can proceed to a vote in the full state Senate after it goes through the Senate Appropriations Committee, which reviews bills that have a fiscal impact after they have been cleared by policy committees. With the Judiciary vote, the bill has cleared the last Senate policy committee that it needed approval from. The bill would also need approval from the Democratic-majority State Assembly and Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA).

At a meeting of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, David Redl, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that the Administration was working on "a spectrum strategy" that should be unveiled "soon," but provided no more details. But that was enough to fire up wireless carriers looking for all the spectrum strategies, and new spectrum, they can get.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wasn't predicting when the FCC's vetting of the Sinclair-Tribune deal would be complete, but suggested that the FCC had not yet had a chance to fully evaluate it. Sinclair filed its latest, and expected to be last, amendment to the deal earlier during the week of April 23.  Chairman Pai was the single witness at a House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee hearing on the FCC's budget. He would not agree to delay a decision on the Sinclair-Tribune deal until a court ruling on a related issue, the UHF discount. ChairmanPai said he would factor the potential court decision into the FCC's decisionmaking. One thing the FCC could do would be to condition the deal on the court upholding the UHF discount.

Users of Facebook, Google and other popular technology platforms are likely to benefit from stricter privacy regulations that will require new disclosures, new forms of consent and new power to limit how personal data is stored and utilized. The changes are being announced in emails, blog posts and new on-screen messages that many consumers are already beginning to see from Apple, Twitter, Airbnb, GoDaddy and others. Don’t bother thanking Washington. Rather the changes emanate from the European Union, which is imposing a host of new regulations that are forcing global changes, including for hundreds of millions tech consumers in the United States. Privacy advocates warn that these changes won’t fundamentally change the relationship between consumers and tech companies, many of which make their profits by collecting data on users, building individual profiles and selling advertising based on the resulting troves of data.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep James Hines (D-CT) testified before the House Judiciary Committee about alleged online censorship of conservative speech. The hearing was on "Filtering Practices of Social Media Platforms" and stemmed in part from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress recently.  The first two panelists were members of Congress, and as such only presented statements and were not questioned afterward. And for more than three hours, Republican leaders and mega-popular conservative bloggers such as Diamond and Silk sought to make themselves heard, loudly, at a hearing on what Democratic Reps described as a grand conspiracy theory. At times yelling at lawmakers, Lynnette Hardaway, known as Diamond, alleged at the hearing that “Facebook along with other social media sites have taken aggressive actions to silence conservative voices like ourselves.” Diamond and Silk also testified, claiming under oath that they were never paid for their consulting work by President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Federal campaign finance filings show otherwise. "We have never been paid by the Trump campaign," Lynette Hardaway, who goes by Diamond, told Rep Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX). Filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show that the campaign paid the duo $1,275 on Nov. 22, 2016, for "field consulting." The two later backtracked under questioning from Rep Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), explaining that the Trump campaign had reimbursed them for airfare after they traveled to a campaign event. They insisted that they had never been paid for consulting work. "We are familiar with that particular lie, we can see that you do look at fake news,” said Rochelle Richardson, the other half of Diamond and Silk, when the New York Democrat brought up the FEC receipt. "I’m just trying to figure out who is lying here,” Rep Jeffries said.

In March, Quinnipiac University’s pollsters asked Americans if they thought certain news outlets — unnamed by Quinnipiac — were enemies of the American people? Nearly 4-in-10 said yes — including more than 8-in-10 Republicans. In a poll released April 26, Quinnipiac was more direct. Less than a quarter of the public says that the news media broadly is better described as “enemy of the people” than an “important part of democracy.” But among Republicans, more than half preferred the former term to the latter. Granted, there was a limited set of options from which to choose. The question wasn’t “is the media the enemy of the people” but “which is a better descriptor.” It’s still remarkable, though, that so many in President Donald Trump’s party think that “enemy” is more accurate than “important part of democracy.”

Facebook, despite years of outreach to conservatives, remains a punching bag for the right. Facebook’s lukewarm relationship with the right has complicated its search for DC allies to help fend off new privacy regulations. On April 24, the company announced it had replaced the head of its Washington office with Kevin Martin, former Republican Federal Communications Commission chairman. Facebook is bracing for another beating — this time, from some conservatives at a hearing featuring pro-Trump video stars Diamond and Silk, who say Facebook discriminated against their content. The internet companies aren't sending representatives to the hearing. One longtime conservative tech policy staffer likened Facebook's face-off with conservatives to trench warfare, "very much like on the Western Front": "In my mind I don’t see much movement in terms of right-of-center groups coming out of their trenches to welcome Facebook, or vice versa.”