Ownership

When Verizon proposed dozens of 5G small-cell antennas along streets in Doylestown Borough (PA), the reaction was a defiant no.

The News Media Alliance has told the Federal Trade Commission that it needs to take action to "rein in tech giants' anticompetitive conduct." That came in comments to the agency in advance of a planned series of public hearings over the next six months or so on competition and consumer protection policy in the digital age. It told the FTC that the Googles and Facebooks of the world did not get to be dominant in distribution and monetization on their merits alone.

Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1. The previously unreported ratings system, which Facebook has developed over the past year, shows that the fight against the gaming of tech systems has evolved to include measuring the credibility of users to help identify malicious actors. Facebook developed its reputation assessments as part of its effort against fake news, Tessa Lyons, the product manager who is in charge of fighting misinformation, said in an interview.

Every year since 2004, Pew Research Center has issued an annual assessment of the state of the news media that tracks key audience and economic indicators for a variety of sectors within the US news media industry. Here are the key findings for 2017:

The News Media Alliance, which represents the newspaper industry, laid out a potential antitrust case against its foes, Google and Facebook, in comments filed with the Federal Trade Commission. The organization outlined legal considerations — including non-price harm to consumers, such as the newspaper industry’s ability to sustain journalism — and explained “how they connect to a potential antitrust case against one or more platforms.” 

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) has asked Federal Communications Commission Inspector General David Hunt to investigate what he said was FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's failure to disclose a conversation he had with White House General Counsel Don McGahn about the Sinclair-Tribune merger, suggesting it could have been a "coverup." Ranking Member Pallone is wondering why Chairman Pai did not disclose the conversation during an earlier House FCC oversight hearing.

Key leadership of the Federal Communications Commission's Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE) have a big problem with the way the FCC has structured the new diversity incubator program they otherwise support, a problem they say could "destroy" the program. That warning came in a call the week of Aug 13 between committee members James Winston and David Honig and Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Housing Sec Ben Carson accused Facebook of enabling illegal housing discrimination by giving landlords and developers advertising tools that made it easy to exclude people based on race, gender, zip code or religion -- or whether a potential renter has young children at home or a personal disability. The action, which comes after nearly two years of preliminary investigation, amounts to a formal legal complaint against the company and starts a process that could culminate in a federal lawsuit against Facebook.

[Commentary] Corporate concentration in the United States is not only increasing inequality but also undermining competition and consumers’ standard of living. Politically, the commensurate lobbying influence of big tech, big finance and other large conglomerates has created what political scientist Francis Fukuyama calls a “vetocracy” — where vested concerns have amassed the clout to choke off legislative reforms that would diminish their spoils.

[Commentary] Millions of Americans use social media to get their news, and that number is growing rapidly by the year. But when they log on, they don’t always get the full story. Powerful social media companies are filtering the information that users receive on their platforms. As a result, the picture we get of politics is partial and distorted, like a carnival mirror. Twitter’s subtle censorship targeted conservatives, and seemingly only conservatives.