Ownership

President Donald Trump threatened the NFL with trying to eliminate a long-standing tax break over the issue of players kneeling during the National Anthem. Vice President Mike Pence left a Colts/49ers game early on Oct 8 after some players took a knee. The President said later he had instructed the Vice President to do so. The NFL threat came in a tweet Oct 10, one of two related to television and sports (the other slammed ESPN for low ratings). "Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!" the President tweeted.

Britain is looking at the role of Google and Facebook in the provision of news and what their wider responsibilities and legal status should be, said a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May. As more people get their news through Google and Facebook, some in the industry say the internet giants are publishers and not just platforms, meaning they should be held responsible for the content and regulated like traditional news providers.

“We are looking at the role Google and Facebook play in the news environment,” the spokesman told reporters, saying the work was part of a commitment to produce a digital charter setting out how firms and individuals should behave online. “As part of that work we will look carefully at the roles, responsibility and legal status of the major internet platforms.”

[Commentary] Cable is no longer the “bottleneck” that Congress once assumed it was for delivering video into American homes. This calls into question the continuing value of must-carry, retransmission consent and other regimes based on this premise.

As a mature-to-declining product, cable must cut costs to remain viable against new competitors. This dynamic explains the recent rise in merger activity among cable operators. Building economies of scale can strengthen regional cable operators’ negotiations with programmers and can help them compete more effectively against Netflix and other alternatives, which are national in scope. It is important that antitrust regulators recognize cable as only one part of a larger market for video services — and allow them to compete accordingly.

[Daniel Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]

Amazon is making a serious effort to break into the digital advertising business, an arena dominated by its fellow behemoth competitors, Google and Facebook. The company is opening a new office in New York City, which it says will bring more than 2,000 jobs. The new space will also bring it closer to New York’s advertising agencies. Media agency executives have already said that they have been increasingly contacted by Amazon representatives trying to sell them and their clients ad space. Amazon has already begun to beef up its ad sales team and enhance its programmatic advertising business.

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, apparently.

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site. The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far.

A group of Democratic Sens is asking regulators to investigate the potential effects of a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. In letters to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission on Oct 6, the eight senators, led by Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), said they are concerned that the potential deal could hurt consumers.

“Beginning an investigation into a merger of T-Mobile and Sprint now will allow your agencies to quickly, but fully, review the agreement if it is announced,” they wrote. “Indeed, multiple news sources are reporting that the two parties are close to a deal in principle. The likelihood of the transaction occurring combined with the serious issues that it raises provide compelling reason for DOJ and the FCC to begin investigating the potential transaction.” The letter was also signed by Sens Al Franken (D-MN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).

Facebook is going to require advertisements that are targeted to people based on "politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues" to be manually reviewed before they go live, according to an e-mail sent to advertisers. That's a higher standard than that required of most Facebook ads, which are bought and uploaded to the site through an automated system. It's also warning that it expects the new policy to slow down the launch of new ad campaigns.

The steps Facebook is taking to combat questions of Russian election interference strike at the core of the company's business. The ad buyers who spent $450 million on Facebook ads love the platform's speed and efficiency — something they fear will be diminished by inserting more human oversight of political ads before they go live. The company's action comes as a political ad disclosure bill gains momentum on Capitol Hill.

Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, took to Twitter to deliver an unusually raw tweetstorm defending the company’s software algorithms against critics who believe Facebook needs more oversight. Facebook uses algorithms to determine everything from what you see and don’t see in News Feed, to finding and removing other content like hate speech and violent threats. The company has been criticized in the past for using these algorithms — and not humans — to monitor its service for things like abuse, violent threats, and misinformation. The algorithms can be fooled or gamed, and part of the criticism is that Facebook and other tech companies don’t always seem to appreciate that algorithms have biases, too. Stamos says it’s hard to understand from the outside.

[Commentary] One of the former most popular and influential instant messaging apps in the world, AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, is shutting down on December 15. But if it weren't for a Federal Communication Commission regulatory decision in 2001, we might all still be using it.

Sixteen years ago, the FCC, the regulatory body responsible for things like television and radio, approved a merger between American Online and Time Warner, but with several conditions. As part of the deal, AOL was required to make its web portal compatible with other chat apps. The government stopped AOL from building a closed system where everyone had to use AIM, meaning it had to adopt interoperability—the ability to be compatible with other computer systems. The FCC required AOL to be compatible with at least one instant messaging rival immediately after the merger went through. Within six months, the FCC required AOL to make its portal compatible with at least two other rivals, or face penalties. The FCC's decision to force AOL to remain open provides a blueprint for how the government could similarly regulate today's gigantic internet platforms, like Facebook.

The House Intelligence Committee is asking officials from Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s Google to testify publicly as part of its Russia probe on Nov. 1, the same day as a planned Senate Intelligence hearing. That would set up a marathon day for the social media companies, which are facing increasing scrutiny over the role their platforms played in Russia’s efforts to meddle in the U.S. election. The House panel previously said it was looking at sometime in October to bring technology companies in for a hearing.