Elections and Media

The leading Democratic presidential candidates are all calling for major increases in spending for roads, bridges, rural broadband and other infrastructure needs, but they'll need large increases in tax revenue to pay for their plans. The Democrats' plans rely far less heavily than private investment than President Donald Trump would, as President Trump's 2018 budget proposed spending $200 billion “to spur at least $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investments with partners at the State, local, Tribal, and private level.” President Trump hasn't pursued the plan with Congress.

By the end of the 2014 election, campaigns and political committees had directly spent about $8 million on Facebook advertising, less than half the amount they’d spent on Google. Through September of 2019, that figure neared $46 million, 50 percent more than what Google took in. And that’s only direct spending, excluding spending by political consultants on behalf of candidates or campaigns. In the 2016 campaign alone, Donald Trump’s team spent somewhere around $70 million on Facebook through a digital firm run by Brad Parscale, who is now Trump’s campaign manager. 

Twitter recently announced that it will no longer allow political advertisements on its digital platform. Implementation of this decision, if possible at all, will have dire consequences for American democracy. Defining a political advertisement is nearly impossible. And social media helps under-funded candidates. And Twitter's ban will not eliminate disinformation. 

On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network’s powerful platform against President Donald Trump. But citing the “Lord of the Rings” franchise and the philosopher John Rawls, Mr. Bosworth said that doing so would eventually backfire. “So what stays my hand?

Over the last decade, lawmakers and regulators slowly woke up to the consequences of the tech industry’s unchecked rise in power. In the 2020s, they'll try to take back control. Here are (some) of the top issues the Washington Post will tracking at The Technology 202 in 2020:

The most consequential stories for tech in 2020 pit the industry's corporate colossi against the US government, foreign nations, and the human needs of their own customers. The big battles ahead include: Securing the 2020 U.S. election; Defining the limits of privacy; Coping with the antitrust onslaught; Defending a global industry in an age of "decoupling;" and Flipping tech from harm to "wellness."

As the 2020 presidential election heats up next year, big tech will be front and center as candidates and members of Congress grapple with questions touching online privacy, antitrust, access to broadband and more. While impeachment hearings have divided the country, when it comes to the big tech issues of the day, Republicans and

The Federal Trade Commission has granted final approval to a settlement with the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, LLC and an app developer who worked with the company to resolve allegations they used deceptive tactics to collect personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting. As part of the settlement, app developer Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix are prohibited from making false or deceptive statements regarding the extent to which they collect, use, share, or sell personal information, as well as the purposes for

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) is confident that if Vice President Joe Biden were to be elected president, he would work with the Democrats to restore net neutrality rules. Net neutrality tends to be an important issue with a lot of people in the tech community and younger voters that want to see a level playing field and make sure ISPs don't block content, he said, but that while it is an important issue, he doesn't see it as a "primary" issue (no pun intended).

With billions of political ad dollars on the line, broadcasters are working hard to make sure a new Federal Communications Commission ruling does not take even a little bite out of their share of that likely record political pie. Broadcasters want the FCC to loosen up when it comes to the reporting requirements for political ads — rules they say could lead to them having to turn down political ad dollars. The reporting obligation stems from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, but the FCC has discretion in how it interprets the requirements in its rules implementing that law.