Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the September Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 26, 2018:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to meet with state attorneys general in Sept 2018 to discuss whether tech companies may be “intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas.” The meeting will also consider whether tech platforms “may have harmed competition” with their actions, a hint that the Justice Department may be weighing antitrust action against the firms. Legal experts said the agency's announcement “clearly suggests” a willingness to intervene on behalf of conservative critics who say they are victims of discrimination by the companies. The Justice Department’s statement:
Antitrust crusaders have built up serious momentum in Washington, making a strong case that big companies (especially big tech companies) are distorting the market to drive out competitors. We need a new standard for monopolies, they argue, one that focuses less on consumer harm and more on the skewed incentives produced by a company the size of Facebook or Google. Here's the case against four of the movement’s biggest targets, and what they might look like if they came out on the losing end.
Securus provides technology services to prisons and jails and has been slammed by inmates’ families who say they’re charged outrageous prices to phone loved ones. The controversy has extended into video call and email services, two other places the company has staked a claim. In October, the company was hit with a $1.7 million fine for allegedly misleading the Federal Communications Commission.
Significant shares of Facebook users have taken steps in the past year to reframe their relationship with the social media platform. Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.
Notable shares of Facebook users ages 18 and older lack a clear understanding of how the site’s news feed operates, feel ordinary users have little control over what appears there, and have not actively tried to influence the content the feed delivers to them. When asked whether they understand why certain posts but not others are included in their news feed, around half of US adults who use Facebook (53%) say they do not – with 20% saying they do not understand the feed at all well.
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