Digital Content

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a series of orders to collect information on the business practices of large technology companies operating payments systems in the United States. Specifically, the orders will compel information on data harvesting and monetization, access restrictions and user choice, and other consumer protections. The information will help the CFPB better understand how these firms use personal payments data and manage data access to users so the Bureau can ensure adequate consumer protection.

Facebook's oversight board said the company hadn’t been forthcoming about how it exempts high-profile users from its rules and said it is drafting recommendations for how to overhaul the system, following a Wall Street Journal investigation into the practice. The oversight board said Facebook had repeatedly failed to turn over, or provided incomplete, information about how it treats content from large numbers of prominent users.

Sen Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) introduced the Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act (S.3029) to hold large social media companies accountable for using computer algorithms that promote harmful and dangerous content that leads to offline violence. Reps Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and Anna G Eshoo (D-CA) introduced companion legislation in the US House of Representatives.

Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to participate in a Congressional hearing on Instagram and its impact on kids in a letter October 20. The Chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security cited the testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and the Wall Street Journal's reports on Facebook as cause for the CEO's appearance before his subcommittee.

Facebook is looking to introduce more news products for its News Tab in the coming months, including more curated collections around big events and breaking news. The News Tab, a separate destination for news on Facebook from publishers selected by the tech giant, has helped the company address regulatory scrutiny that it doesn't do enough to combat misinformation. It is currently live in the US, UK, Australia and Germany, with other English-speaking countries in consideration.

European Union countries will delay a key target of finalizing new rules hitting tech platforms by the spring of 2022, now saying they aim to reach a deal “as soon as possible” ahead of a leaders’ summit on October 21. The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are two heavily debated pieces of legislation unveiled in 2020 by the European Commission that seek to curb the power of Big Tech. The Digital Markets Act seeks to curb anti-competitive behavior, while the Digital Services Act would regulate online content.

SK Broadband, wholly owned by South Korea’s largest mobile carrier SK Telecom, thinks Netflix should pay a congestion charge for hit shows like the streaming service's recently released "Squid Game." The company says the traffic that Netflix generates on its network has surged to 1.2tn bits of data processed per second as of September 2021, the month of Squid Game’s release, a 24-fold increase over three years. It has had to upgrade its network twice to accommodate the traffic surge caused by the show.

States have been the primary actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. That is starting to change, as a handful of large technology companies rival them for geopolitical influence. Nonstate actors are increasingly shaping geopolitics, with technology companies in the lead. And although Europe wants to play, its companies do not have the size or geopolitical influence to compete with their American and Chinese counterparts. Most of the analysis of US-Chinese technological competition, however, is stuck in a statist paradigm.

This study, commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and led by a researcher from Harvard Business School, assesses the impact of the internet on US gross domestic product (GDP). Key findings: