Aaron Sankin

Los Angeles Becomes First US City to Outlaw Digital Discrimination

The city council in Los Angeles (CA) passed a motion banning “digital discrimination,” which is when internet service providers inequitably deploy high-speed internet connections or disproportionately withhold the best deals for their services from racially or socio-economically marginalized neighborhoods.The legislation, authored by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, expanded the types of discrimination the city could investigate to include digital discrimination.

Slow Internet? Find Out What Side of the Digital Divide You’re On

Does your neighborhood pay more money for slower internet compared to neighborhoods across town? This step-by-step guide helps you answer that question and more. All you need is a computer, a Google account, and (yes) internet access. The steps are as follows:

Who’s Afraid of Disparate Impact?

Over the past year, I’ve focused on investigating why the internet connection at your house is slow and what you can do about it. Tucked deep in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, is a short provision giving

Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service

AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered the worst internet deals to neighborhoods that were formerly redlined, whose residents are lower income and have a higher concentration of people of color than other parts of the city.