Digital Content

1. Broadband is essential: A lot has changed since the previous Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality. A devastating pandemic reaffirmed the essential nature of broadband access to protect the health and economic security of all Americans.
2. Abdicated oversight: The 2017 FCC approach was not “light touch.” It was a complete abdication of authority.
3. Targeted approach: Chairwoman Rosenworcel’s approach is targeted, not heavy-handed.

The Federal Communications Commission will begin implementing President Biden’s plan for increasing government control of the Internet. There will be lots of talk about “net neutrality” and virtually none about the core issue before the agency: namely, whether the FCC should claim for itself the freewheeling power to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions—from the services that consumers can access to the prices that can be charged. The entire debate over whether Title II regulations are necessary or justified was settled years ago.

Sens Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced legislation to limit children's access to social media at school by requiring schools receiving federal broadband funding to prohibit access on subsidized services, devices, and networks.

In an era where every click, tap or keystroke leaves a digital trail, Americans remain uneasy and uncertain about their personal data and feel they have little control over how it’s used. This wariness is even ticking up in some areas like government data collection, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted May 15-21, 2023. According to the study, Americans – particularly Republicans – have grown more concerned about how the government uses their data. The public increasingly says they don’t understand what companies are doing with their data.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued its latest report to Congress on protecting older adults, which highlights key trends based on fraud reports by older adults, and the FTC’s multi-pronged efforts to combat the problem through law enforcement actions, rulemaking, and outreach and education programs. The report finds that older adults reported losing more than $1.6 billion to fraud in 2022. The report’s analysis shows that older adults filed the largest number of reports about online frauds—where consumers were first exposed to the fraud via social media, the web, or online ads.

The Federal Communications Commission is heading into the next round of Washington’s longest-running fight over technology policy. On Oct. 19 the agency is slated to take a preliminary vote to reassert its authority to regulate broadband providers, clearing the way to pass a version of the net neutrality rules that it eviscerated during the Trump administration.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced her plan to restore the agency’s rightful authority to protect internet users. To undermine this effort, the industry has cranked up its Title II myth machine.

A fact sheet on how net neutrality protects consumers and online freedom of speech. Open internet protections have long had widespread – upwards of 80 percent – support from the American people who have come to expect that they will be able to access all lawful content on the internet uninhibited by their broadband service provider’s business decisions. Across administrations from 2005 to 2018, it was the clear policy of the FCC to enforce open internet standards.

Network neutrality mandates have been made out either as necessary to ensure a level playing field in online markets or, alternatively, as overly restrictive regulation preventing innovation and investment. However, there is little empirical research on the consequences of data throttling, which becomes legal without network neutrality regulations. We combine throughput levels measured for mobile internet service providers in the United States with usage data to explore how sensitive users are to such practices.

The Federal Communications Commission currently regulates broadband internet access service (BIAS, if you will) as an "information service" under Title I of the Communications Act. As the FCC contemplates reclassifying BIAS as a telecommunications service under Title II's common-carrier framework, the question is whether the FCC has authority to do so. Federal appeals courts have upheld previous FCC decisions on whether to apply common carrier rules to broadband.