Financial Times

[Commentary] We in the US are deeply concerned about the way the European Union’s new privacy guidelines, which came into effect last week, will force big changes in the way US and European companies do business. Donald Trump’s administration supports the new General Data Protection Regulation’s goal of protecting personal online data while continuing to enable transatlantic data exchange. We are also committed to working with the EU to implement the new guidelines.

Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is shutting down following disclosures about its use of Facebook data and the campaign tactics it pitched to clients. Apparently, the company decided to close its doors because it was losing clients and facing mounting legal fees in the Facebook investigation. The firm is shutting down effective May 2 and employees have been told to turn in their computers.

The European Commission is for the first time preparing to regulate how search engines such as Google operate, under draft proposals designed to bolster the rights of businesses and app makers that rely on big internet giants to sell their services. The European Commission has expanded its plans to regulate the relationship online platforms such as Amazon and Apple have with vendors to also include the practices of search engines such as Google. Under the plans, the tech platforms would be required to provide companies with more information about how their ranking algorithms work.

Ofcom has launched an investigation into whether Three and Vodafone, the UK telecoms operators, are “throttling” certain services on their networks in contravention of European Union rules on net neutrality. The investigation could have a profound impact on how telecoms groups across Europe manage traffic, and whether they continue to offer customers unlimited access to certain types of content — such as social media apps or music streaming services — on top of normal data usage restrictions.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai pledged to clamp down on any unfair behaviour by US broadband companies following the scrapping of net neutrality rules, saying “fear mongering” about the internet will gradually fade. "Some of the headlines that, quote, this is the end of internet as we know it have been proven completely wrong.

The Trump administration's approach to a fair and open internet seeks a compromise between too much regulation and too little, said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. "Some people said that we should maintain the rules we had, the heavy-handed regulations that were based in the 1930s," he said. "Others said we should wipe the slate clean, have no regulations whatsoever. We charted a middle course."  Chairman Pai said that he's looking to counter the "misinformation" that's produced this is the "'end of the internet as we know it'" type headlines.