Axios

A collection of progressive groups will launch a six figure digital ad offensive May 21 telling the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook’s social networking empire. The groups are asking for the FTC to do three things:

Pro-Trump media is spreading across the US, disseminating Trumpian rhetoric about fake news and mainstream media bias through every medium. The big picture, from Rodney Benson, chair of NYU's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication: "Many of the media moving toward subscriptions have disproportionately left-liberal audiences. ... While liberal media draw their circles ever tighter around themselves (via paywalls, high-level content, etc.), conservatives are fighting to extend their mass reach."

Democratic lawmakers say they can make political hay of the battle over network neutrality among a small — but committed — group of midterm voters. The linchpin of that strategy is a vote in the Senate May 16 on a measure to undo the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 repeal of net neutrality rules. That raises the prominence of the effort to preserve the neutrality rules — and will put at least some Republicans on record as opposing it.

The internet age has become an identity crisis as they face increasing competition from Silicon Valley, an uncertain merger landscape and global pressures in the race to 5G networks. It's no longer enough to power the pipes and cell towers that send internet traffic coursing around the world. The services that ride on top of that traffic, -- Google, Facebook and Amazon -- now dominate the internet ecosystem.

Intersection, the Alphabet-backed smart cities startup known for creating free internet kiosks for cities, is pushing to make free internet accessible in as many major cities as possible across the globe. There are two things a city must have:

The ouster of AT&T's top lobbyist caught DC telecom insiders by surprise and underscored that even the most well-oiled Washington machine isn't immune to inadvertent entanglement with Trumpworld scandal.