President Donald Trump lashed out anew at the news media, calling it “the true Enemy of the People,” and he again blamed what he called “fraudulent” reporting for anger that has led to a spate of recent violence in the country. "There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!" he tweeted. The day before, on Oct 28, President Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country.”

In some corners of the internet, the tired hypothetical of free speech has been turned on its head: There isn’t one person yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, but a theater full of people yelling “Burn it down.” All of which complicates the situation for the big internet companies. Over the past 10 years, free speech has undergone a radical change in practice. Now nearly all significant speech runs through a corporate platform, be it a large hosting provider, WordPress, Facebook, or Twitter. Speech may be free by law, but attention is part of an economy. Every heinous crime linked to an app or website tests the fragile new understanding that tech companies have of their relationship to speech.

A Q&A with Vermont gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist.

Christine Hallquist has a plan for universal broadband, and it’s all about the grid. She’s best known as the first openly transgender gubernatorial nominee, but the former CEO of an electricity cooperative is campaigning on a bold and unprecedented proposal: a mandate requiring electric utilities to hang fiber-optic cable across their service areas. If successful, her plan would bring affordable, modern connections to every home and business in Vermont—an extraordinary outcome anywhere, but especially in an overwhelmingly rural state.

T-Mobile is known for breaking the rules in wireless, but now it wants Federal Communications Commission permission to bend the rules, so to speak, as part of a 600 MHz experiment in North Carolina. More specifically, T-Mobile wants to conduct tests in parts of NC to investigate the possibility of transmitting on portions of the 600 MHz B Block that’s spectrally closer to TV stations than permitted by the FCC’s rules. The operator says it will do so “in a manner that will not cause harmful interference to television viewers.” 

In apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission. At other times an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something. Published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, a new study’s findings are stark: 95 percent of commonly downloaded apps marketed to be played by children ages 5 and under contain at least one type of advertising. The researchers concluded many of these examples seemed to violate FTC rules around unfair and deceptive advertising. More than a dozen media and children’s health advocacy organizations sent the FTC a letter asking for an investigation.

Brian Hart, director of the Federal Communications Commission’s office of media relations, said that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “plans to lead the FCC for the foreseeable future.” Pai — a Republican appointed to the commission by President Barack Obama in 2012, then named chair by President Donald Trump in Jan 2017 — was asked after the FCC’s Oct 23 public meeting whether he planned to remain in that post if the Democrats took over the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Chairman Pai responded he “[couldn’t] speculate about hypothetical future election results that haven’t even come in yet, so, we’re staying the course." Plans can change, of course, but according to Hart, the chairman will remain for that foreseeable future (in which arguably a Democratic-controlled House is certainly visible), in part because there are still a lot of things on his plate. “Chairman Pai remains focused on his key priorities, including bridging the digital divide, fostering American leadership in 5G and empowering telehealth advancements,” Hart said. A House changeover could mean ramped-up oversight from legislators who have been tough on Chairman Pai over network neutrality and media ownership deregulation.