Digital Content

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has declined to hold edge providers liable for false third-party content posted on their sites, even if they know the information being posted is false. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are not responsible for flooding the online search market with info on "scam" locksmiths, if the market has been so flooded, because such liability is barred by the Communications Decency Act, whose much-in-the-news Sec. 230 holds that the edge can't be treated as a publisher of third party content on their platforms.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the changing video marketplace, with representatives from top trade association chiefs, Free Press, and Nielsen. The hearing looked at the video marketplace's change from appointment content on TV sets, to "how, where and when" content on a variety of devices. Everyone was in agreement that the video marketplace had changed dramatically while the laws had not, but whether to start from scratch or modify existing laws--like STELAR and the 1992 Cable Act--generated a lot of different opinions.

YouTube said it will remove false videos alleging that major events like the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech.

Behavioral advertising, which involves collecting data about readers’ online behavior and using it to serve them specially tailored ads, often through bits of code called cookies, has become the dominant force in digital advertising in recent years.

Facebook says it will continue to host a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that has been edited to give the impression that the she is drunk or unwell, in the latest incident highlighting its struggle to deal with disinformation. The video has been slowed down to give the impression she is slurring her words. President Trump's personal lawyer, the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, was among the Trump supporters who promoted the story. He tweeted – then deleted – a link to a copy of the video on Facebook with the caption: “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi?

Google, Facebook, and Twitter executives came to Capitol Hill to testify about election security. Instead, they faced a grilling about whether their platforms are biased against conservatives. A string of Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee skipped questions about how the companies were tackling disinformation campaigns or preventing Russians from purchasing political ads on their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Americans increasingly are moving away from cable and satellite pay-TV services and opting to stream online video offerings, data from National Telecommunication and Information Administration’s latest Internet Use Survey show. While most households still subscribe to cable or satellite television services, the survey shows the proportion of Internet users watching videos online has grown from 45 percent in 2013 to 70 percent in 2017.

A Q&A with Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The law in question is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, written by Sen Wyden and former Rep Chris Cox (R-CA). It protects internet companies from being held liable for the content posted by their users and says they’re platforms, not publishers. It also gives them the space to police their sites and restrict and take down material as they see fit. 

Public-interest groups and civil liberties advocates say there's no clear evidence Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other companies suppress conservative viewpoints. And they say they're troubled by the prospect of government officials, particularly President Donald Trump, seeking to intimidate Silicon Valley over the issue. "A more pressing problem than alleged 'censorship' of any particular viewpoint is the proliferation of misinformation, propaganda, hate speech, terrorist content, and harassment online," said John Bergmayer, a senior counsel at Public Knowledge.