Ownership

Growing up in Johnson County (KS), Geoffrey Starks could walk from his Leawood home to the Sprint campus in Overland Park. Starks, 39, sworn in earlier in 2019 as the newest commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, offers this piece of personal history to say that the FCC’s upcoming vote on T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger with Sprint is more than just his first big decision.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-OR) said that the goal of new internet regulation, which he says he generally supports, should be to prevent bad behavior by Internet service providers, not to re-enshrine the Title II telecommunication definition suited to monopoly telephone companies.

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim and Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly offered different perspectives on how the government should treat antitrust cases - especially in the media industry. Delrahim suggested that courts should "bifurcate trials," with one segment evaluating the transaction and another phase offering a remedy.

The European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for breaching European Union antitrust rules. Google has abused its market dominance by imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites which prevented Google's rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites.

Apple announced a new initiative in support of leading nonprofit organizations in the US and Europe that offer nonpartisan, independent media literacy programs. The News Literacy Project (NLP) and Common Sense in the US and Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori in Italy will each receive support from Apple to advance their efforts in empowering young people with the critical thinking skills necessary in today’s digital age.

After each misdeed becomes public, Facebook alternates between denial, hollow promises and apology campaigns. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, I am calling for an investigation into whether Facebook’s conduct has violated antitrust laws. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Federal Trade Commission has confirmed that it is investigating Facebook to determine whether it violated a consent order it entered into with the commission in 2011.

A Q&A with Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO). 

Facebook’s effort to establish a service that provides its users with local news and information is being hindered by a lack of outlets where the company’s technicians can find original reporting. The service, called "Today In" and launched in 2018, is available in some 400 cities in the United States. But the social media giant said it has found that 40% of Americans live in places where there weren’t enough local news stories to support it.

On March 8, 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took to Medium to outline her plan to break up digital monopolies. Her proposal aims to restore competition in the tech sector and ensure online platforms play by the rules. Warren goes beyond the familiar “break ‘em up” rhetoric and actually offers sustainable sector-specific regulation -- an important step in advancing the policy debate around Big Tech.

It was quite noteworthy to see Freshman Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO) tear the Federal Trade Commission a new one for its failure to do anything about how tech companies generally (and Google and Facebook specifically) vacuum up everyone’s personal information. I’m not going to argue with Sen Hawley, but since he is new in town I think it is important for him to understand why the FTC (and other federal agencies charged with consumer protection) have generally gone from fearsome watchdog to timorous toothless Chihuahua with laryngitis.