Fast Company

T-Mobile and Sprint are small players in a wireless market where being small makes it hard to survive. One expert told me that if the deal is framed as a pairing of two of the four national wireless carriers, it has little chance of making it past the regulators. That’s why T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint executive chairman Marcelo Claure have been trying to describe the combined company as a new kind of entity that sells not only wireless service, but potentially home broadband service and a host of media in the future.

A strong network neutrality bill is advancing through the CA legislature, and the Big Intenet service providers (ISPS)–mainly AT&T and Comcast–are working overtime to stop it in its tracks. The bill passed the state Senate on May 30 by a healthy 23 to 12 margin. In the weeks leading up to that vote, lobbyists for the big ISPs tried to spread enough doubt about the bill’s possible implications that lawmakers would simply not vote on it. CA Senate Democrats needed an extra date to find the votes, but they found them, and the bill moved on to the Assembly.

The June 19 episode of the New York Times' podcast "The Daily"  focused on the GOP’s controversial new policy of separating migrant families. Reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis had actually interviewed White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, and she planned to use the audio from the interview on this morning’s show.

[Commentary] Requiring the targeting data label on ads is just a simple way of bringing the shadowy business of data collection and ad targeting into the light of day. If Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are sure that there is nothing wrong with harvesting users’ personal data to place ads, they should have no problem with being completely open with consumers about the real costs of the “free” service their company provides. Internet advertisers may complain that ad targeting is a complicated business and that the targeting of one ad may rely on many pieces of user data. Well, so be it.

Here are some financial, technical, and political measures you can take: 1) Find net neutrality- and privacy-friendly broadband providers, 2) Subscribe to a virtual private network, 3) Use an encrypted DNS service, and 4) Find consumer-friendly states (or make them that way).