Washington Post

[Commentary] We reject the idea that the federal government should control the Internet. That’s why we have introduced the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which will complement Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s efforts to repeal the 2015 Internet takeover by preventing the FCC from issuing any similar regulations in the future.

As Pai recently explained, “regulations designed for monopoly will push the market further toward monopoly.” This is not what is best for citizens in Utah, Wisconsin, Texas or the rest of the country. We want more competition, not less. More investment, not less. More innovation, not less. We support an open Internet. But we reject the notion that heavy-handed regulations are the way to accomplish this goal.

Whatever Facebook plans to pay its 3,000 new hires, it’s hard to think that it will be enough. Getting in the door at a huge, influential tech company may, in the abstract, sound like an exciting opportunity. But the new positions, which the social media giant will be adding over the course of the next year, involve a new and grinding kind of work: These people will join 4,500 existing Facebook employees in reviewing the grimmest and grisliest content posted to the site to determine what should be allowed to stay up and what should be deleted.

Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat in the 2016 presidential election to interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James B. Comey, and declared herself to be “part of the resistance” to Donald Trump’s presidency. “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton told moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women event in New York. “I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton said. Clinton talked about “the unprecedented interference” by a foreign leader “who is not a member of my fan club” — a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, with whom she tangled as secretary of state.

[Commentary] Global press freedom has long been in decline and is now at its lowest point in the past 13 years, according to Freedom House’s latest assessment. What is new, and especially disquieting, are the mounting pressures on the media in the United States, including sharp attacks on reporters by the Trump administration. This raises the question of whether America will continue to serve as a model for other countries.

The United States remains an oasis, one of the few places in the world where aggressive journalistic investigation can be practiced with few legal restrictions and little physical danger to reporters. But even here, press freedom has been weakening for some time, well before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Since Trump’s rise to the presidency, however, matters have taken a turn for the worse. The new White House derides and belittles journalists and media organizations in the hope of undermining the credibility of the press. In so doing, the administration is aggressively promoting the notion that nuance and facts are irrelevant — a staple concept of Russian information warfare.

[Michael Arbramowitz is the president of Freedom House. Arch Puddington is a distinguished fellow for democracy studies at Freedom House.]

[Commentary] May 1, the DC Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc challenging the soon-to-be replaced network neutrality rules. Judges Brown and Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing, and each wrote to explain why. Brown and Kavanaugh both argued that Chevron deference doesn’t apply, but it’s Kavanaugh’s second argument that I want to focus on: that net neutrality regulations implicate the First Amendment.

Kavanaugh relies on Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC. The key was that cable programmers and operators “engage in and transmit speech” — mere transmission wasn’t enough. What cable operators speakers was their own programming and their practice of “exercising editorial discretion,” entailing their “‘see[king] to communicate messages.'” Kavanaugh sees Internet service providers as analogous to cable operators.

[Stuart Benjamin is the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Research, and co-director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke Law School.]

A federal appeals court has said it will not rehear a landmark case looking to overturn the government’s rules on network neutrality. May 1's decision by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit allows its previous ruling upholding the regulations to stand — and paves the way for opponents of the rules to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“I'm super excited,” said Daniel Berninger, one of the critics who in 2015 sued the Federal Communications Commission, which wrote the rules. “When we get to the Supreme Court, we want to be saying [to a largely conservative bench] this is a severe case of government overreach.” If the Supreme Court agrees to take the case, it could hear oral arguments spring 2018, said Berninger, who intends to file his appeal within 90 days.

For President Donald Trump, it is critical that Alex Jones and other backers in the conservative media continue to look on the bright side — and continue to tell the president's base to do the same.

Despite these reversals and shortcomings, Trump's base is standing by him. No single factor can fully explain loyalty, but positive spin in the conservative press is surely a big one. The message Trump voters have heard over and over is that their man deserves a long leash. So far, they seem willing to give him one. But things could change if commentators like Jones, Limbaugh and Hannity were to turn on Trump. The White House seems to understand the stakes.

An advocacy group known for challenging the tech industry on privacy called on the Federal Trade Commission Thursday to investigate media reports that Uber could identify specific iPhone devices even after users deleted the ride-hailing app. California-based Consumer Watchdog alleged that Uber’s practice would be considered “unfair or deceptive” to its users and therefore violates a statute in the Federal Trade Commission Act designed to protect consumers from substantial and avoidable harm.

The nonpartisan group also asked Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen and Commissioner Terrell McSweeny to determine whether Uber engaged in similar tactics on Android devices and scrutinize whether the company is abiding by its own privacy policies. “They have a track record of not paying any attention to the rules. That’s why it’s important, no matter what they’ve done with Apple, for the FTC to act,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s privacy project director.

[Commentary] For as long as the Internet has existed, it has been grounded on the principle of net neutrality — that what you read, see or watch online shouldn’t be favored, blocked or slowed down based on where that content is coming from.

Net neutrality means that cable companies can’t reserve the fastest Internet speeds for the biggest companies and leave everyone else in the slow lane. That’s what ensures a website for a local pizza place in rural Oregon or Minnesota loads as quickly as the website for Pizza Hut or Domino’s. Or why a social network built in a garage is available to the same people as Instagram or Twitter. That’s why it’s so alarming to see that the Federal Communications Commission, a federal agency that’s expected to help protect the Internet, is planning to roll back net neutrality rules. It’s amazing that President Donald Trump, having promised to stand up to the powerful on behalf of ordinary Americans, now has an FCC that gives the powerful what they ask for — even if it hurts consumers.

[Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, are members of the U.S. Senate. Tom Wheeler was FCC chairman from 2013 to January.]

They've raised prices. They've slowed speeds. But despite their best efforts, the country's biggest cellphone carriers have been unable to kill off the unlimited data plan. Now they're discovering something else: Unlimited data is extremely popular. And it might just be the thing that saves them in an increasingly cutthroat market for wireless services.

After years of trying to shift customers to plans with monthly data caps, companies such as AT&T and Verizon have begun heaping praise on their newest unlimited data plans as consumers have flocked to them. The plans were once common in the industry. But telecom giants stopped selling them as consumer demand for data grew. Many unlimited customers found themselves signing onto metered plans when prices rose, or abandoning their unlimited plans after running into speed limits. Eventually, the number of those on grandfathered unlimited plans dwindled to a handful. In 2015, just 1 percent of Verizon's customers were on unlimited plans.