New York Times

Facebook replaced its head of policy in the United States, Erin Egan, as the social network scrambles to respond to intense scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers. Egan, who is also Facebook’s chief privacy officer, was responsible for lobbying and government relations as head of policy for the last two years. She will be replaced by Kevin Martin on an interim basis. Martin has been Facebook’s vice president of mobile and global access policy and is a former Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Comcast formally unveiled a $30.7 billion takeover bid for Sky, putting the American cable giant squarely in a takeover battle with Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox for control over the British satellite broadcaster.  The terms of the long-awaited proposal were good enough to prompt Sky to withdraw its recommendation for Fox’s $16 billion bid for the 61 percent of Sky that it does not already own.

Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told Congress under oath that by providing its users with greater and more transparent controls over the personal data they share and how it is used for targeted advertising, he insisted, Facebook could empower them to make their own call and decide how much privacy they were willing to put on the block. As he surely knows, providing a greater sense of control over their personal data won’t make Facebook users more cautious. It will instead encourage them to share more.

In Europe and the United States, the conventional wisdom is that regulation is needed to force Silicon Valley’s digital giants to respect people’s online privacy. But new rules may instead serve to strengthen Facebook’s and Google’s hegemony and extend their lead on the internet. That’s because wary consumers are more prone to trust recognized names with their information than unfamiliar newcomers.