Ownership

An advocacy group is suing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for records on Facebook’s privacy practices, arguing that there’s a “clear public interest” in learning details about the social media giant’s policies following revelations of a data scandal.  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to push for the unredacted release of biennial privacy assessments that Facebook agreed to submit under a 2011 consent agreement with the FTC.

Aleksandr Kogan, the academic who was hired by Cambridge Analytica to harvest information from tens of millions of Facebook profiles, defended his role in the data collection, saying he was upfront about how the information would be used and that he “never heard a word” of objection from Facebook. Yet Kogan, 28, a psychology professor who has found himself cast as the villain by both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, expressed regret for his role in the data mining, which took place in 2014. “Back then, we thought it was fine. Right now my opinion has really been changed,” he said.

Facebook spent more money lobbying the US government in the first quarter of 2018 than it ever has before, according to a new filing. The social media company forked over $3.3 million to steer lawmakers on privacy, security, online advertising and transparency efforts, among other issues.

The Justice Department is investigating whether AT&T and Verizon may have colluded to thwart a technology that could allow wireless customers to switch network providers more easily.

In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts. Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we’ve installed, demographics such as age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we’ve shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn’t use information from “sensitive categories” such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

Apparently, the Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into potential coordination by AT&T, Verizon and a telecommunications standards organization to hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers. In Feb, the Justice Department issued demands to AT&T, Verizon and the GSMA, a mobile industry standards-setting group, for information on potential collusion to thwart a technology known as eSIM, apparently. 

[Commentary] The FCC chairman has done much to advance his deregulation agenda but there’s one conspicuous exception — the local TV ownership rule that prevents ownership of two top-four stations in a market. To put such combos together, you have to get what amounts to a waiver and that can be costly and time consuming.

Comcast and Charter announced a joint venture that will fuel both cable company's' continued move into the mobile broadband ecosystem. The partnership will focus on developing and operating backend systems that support both Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile, signaling a more committed effort for cable MSO-based mobile offerings. Each company will continue to operate their own mobile brands and their own customer-facing sales and marketing operations.

All 2.2 billion people who use Facebook will soon see changes to their privacy settings, in response to a sweeping new privacy law in Europe — but American users won't see exactly the same thing as their European counterparts.

The Federal Communications Commission faced skeptical questioning from judges about a rule change that made way for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media, raising the possibility of turmoil for the $3.9 billion deal.  Judges at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, hearing a challenge April 20 to the change, questioned why the FCC had reinstated a rule allowing owners of some TV stations to count just part of their audience when tallying holdings against a national limit of 39 percent.