Brian Fung

This activist group is trying to oust Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s chairman

Mark Zuckerberg should give up some of his control over Facebook by relinquishing his position as chairman of the board, according to a new proposal by a consumer watchdog group and a few shareholders. The proposal, led by SumOfUs, claims that Facebook's future success requires “a balance of power between the CEO and the board,” and that without a chairman who is independent of the company, Facebook could act without repercussions against investors. “An independent board chair is a necessary first step to put Facebook’s board on the path to effective representation of the interests of all shareholders,” reads the proposal, which goes on to highlight the need for greater accountability amid controversies over fake news, harassment and hate speech. The proposal was received by Facebook on Feb 3.

The FCC is stopping 9 companies from providing federally subsidized Internet to the poor

The Federal Communications Commission is telling nine companies they won't be allowed to participate in a federal program meant to help them provide affordable Internet access to low-income consumers — weeks after those companies had been given the green light.

The move undercuts the companies' ability to provide low-cost Internet access to poorer Americans. For Kajeet Inc., one of the companies that was initially granted permission to provide service through Lifeline, the news comes as a blow. “I’m most concerned about the children we serve,” said Kajeet founder Daniel Neal. “We partner with school districts — 41 states and the District of Columbia — to provide educational broadband so that poor kids can do their homework.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had indicated that closing the digital divide is one of the signature issues he hopes to address. But the Feb 3 move cuts against those remarks.

"The most obvious fact in our society is that high-speed Internet is astronomically expensive for the middle-class and down," said Gene Kimmelman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. "So in any way limiting the Lifeline program, at this moment in time, exacerbates the digital divide. It doesn't address it in any positive way."

What Chairman Pai thinks about net neutrality

Is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for or against network neutrality? In plain English, Chairman Pai is saying he's in favor of the idea of net neutrality; he just doesn't like the FCC's policy of regulating the Internet providers with Title II of the Communications Act. But, how can you be for net neutrality but against the FCC's rules? Aren't the rules "net neutrality"? The FCC regulations are aimed at preserving a free and open Internet, but they aren't technically synonymous with net neutrality. The regulations are simply the government's attempt to defend net neutrality, which is a broader idea about how the Internet should work.

Chairman Pai said he was supportive of a number of so-called freedoms identified by former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Now that he's chairman, Pai isn't saying much about net neutrality beyond that. But we can look to other Title II opponents for clues as to possible alternatives to the current policy. There are several main paths forward, it seems, and any mixture of them seems possible. The FCC could choose not to enforce the net neutrality rules. It could actively seek to roll them back by reversing Wheeler's reclassification. And Congress could seek to legislate.

President Trump taps net neutrality critic Ajit Pai to lead the FCC

President Trump has named Ajit Pai, an advocate of deregulation and a critic of the government's network neutrality rules, as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Pai's new position will give him control over the nation's most powerful telecommunication and cable regulator, with a 2-1 Republican majority that is widely expected to begin undoing some of the Obama era's most significant tech policies.

The Indian-American who grew up in Kansas had until now been a sitting Republican commissioner at the FCC — meaning he will not need to be confirmed by the US Senate before serving as the agency's 34th chairman. Pai was a staunch critic of Democratic efforts aimed at breaking the dominance of some of America's biggest Internet providers, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

Why Netflix isn’t worried about GOP plans to weaken network neutrality

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take the Oval Office, one high-profile tech issue that many analysts are watching is network neutrality. Republicans are widely expected to seek changes to the rules, which currently bar Internet providers from slowing down websites they don't like or speeding up others in exchange for payment. But one staunch backer of the rules isn't too worried about the impending rollback, and that's Netflix. It believes it's become so big that any changes to the net neutrality rules aren't likely to affect its business much at all.

“Weakening of US Net neutrality laws, should that occur, is unlikely to materially affect our domestic margins or service quality because we are now popular enough with consumers to keep our relationships with ISPs stable,” the company wrote. “We hope the new U.S. administration and Congress will recognize that keeping the network neutral drives job growth and innovation,” the letter reads. “It's understandable that people describe this as Comcast versus Netflix,” said Matt Wood, policy director of the consumer group Free Press. But, he said, “We [are] concerned about the next innovative company that doesn't have the ability to buy itself out of trouble.”

How a onetime ally of Comcast and AT&T turned the tables on industry

Once pilloried by consumer advocates and comedian John Oliver as a shill for big business, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler took many by surprise as he brought challenge after challenge to the dominance of the companies he once represented. “I have always been the insurgent versus the incumbent,” he said.

Welcoming the votes of his Republican colleagues when it was politically convenient, forging ahead unilaterally when it wasn't, Chairman Wheeler sought to turn a staid federal office better known for policing celebrity wardrobe malfunctions and distributing airwave licenses into a consumer protection agency that would shape U.S. companies and technologies of the future. But now a dark cloud looms over Wheeler's legacy as Republicans — led by President-elect Donald Trump — prepare to undo some of the most significant regulations approved under his watch. No policy inspires as much fury among technologically minded Republicans as net neutrality, a signature FCC initiative that turned Internet service into a kind of 21st-century utility. Subjecting Internet providers to the same obligations that traditional phone companies must meet, Wheeler's decision to ram the policy through over conservative objections led to intense outrage from his political opponents. A federal court upheld the rules in the face of an industry lawsuit, appearing to settle the matter once and for all.

‘I don’t intend to go crawl under a rock’: An exit interview with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler

A Q&A with outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Asked, "What would you say were your biggest accomplishments and, by contrast, your biggest defeats or setbacks?" Chairman Wheeler replied, "I'm really proud of what we did on net neutrality. I'm proud about what we did on privacy. I'm proud of what we did on cybersecurity. I'm proud of what we did on E-Rate. I'm proud of what we did on Lifeline. There are a lot of things I look back on with pride, and smile. I mean, we were the first to have spectrum for 5G in the world. We expanded the rural broadband program. I mean, I'm proud, when I look back on it." Asked, "What are you going to do now? Do you see yourself staying in tech policy?" Chairman Wheeler replied, "I'm a network guy. I've spent the last 40 years of my life in new and evolving networks. I don't think the cat can change his stripes. I'm going to go to the Aspen Institute and decompress for about three months. I don't intend to go crawl under a rock someplace."

Why AT&T’s top execs are visiting Trump Tower

Top AT&T executives swept into Trump Tower Jan 12 for a discussion with President-elect Donald Trump's team that could include the telecommunication giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson and Senior Executive Vice President Robert Quinn arrived at about 9:15 am — and headed upstairs without telling reporters why they were there. But with AT&T's massive merger still pending — and with Trump having publicly opposed the deal — it would be a surprise if the acquisition were not brought up in Stephenson and Quinn's meeting. That is bolstered by the fact that Quinn serves as AT&T's top official in Washington and is charged with handling regulatory affairs. To complete the purchase, AT&T must persuade the federal government that the deal would not harm competition.

Google’s parent has given up on one of its big, futuristic projects: Internet by drone

For years, companies like Facebook and Google have captivated audiences with the prospect of someday beaming Internet access down to earth from drones or satellites flying high above the ground. The dream held particular promise for developing countries where it's often expensive to build cellular towers or lay down physical Internet cabling. Now, though, Google's parent company, Alphabet, is scaling back its ambitions for Internet by drone. It has disbanded the team that had been developing the technology, according to the company. Dozens of employees in the group, known as Titan, have been reassigned to work on other projects. They include Project Wing, Alphabet's effort to develop a drone delivery service, and Project Loon, which seeks to deliver Internet around the world via floating balloons. That project is still going strong, Alphabet says.

WikiLeaks proposes tracking verified Twitter users’ homes, families and finances

WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations. “We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships,” WikiLeaks tweeted Jan 6.

The disclosure organization, run by Julian Assange, says the information would be used for an artificial-intelligence program. But Twitter users immediately fired back, saying WikiLeaks would use the list to take political vengeance against those who criticize it. Twitter “verifies” certain users, such as world leaders, nonprofit organizations and news outlets, with a blue check mark beside their names so that other users of the service can be confident about the posters' identities. Asked by journalist Kevin Collier why it needed to build a database of dossiers, WikiLeaks replied that the database would be used as a “metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.” But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.

AT&T says the FCC doesn’t need to review its Time Warner acquisition

AT&T is trying to ease its way out of scrutiny by the Federal Communications Commission over the wireless and TV giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Telecommunication regulators shouldn't need to analyze the deal because it will be beyond their jurisdiction, AT&T signaled in a filing Jan 5 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. By potentially eliminating a layer of oversight, the claim could accelerate the merger's approval in Washington, where federal antitrust officials are also expected to review the proposed purchase.

AT&T, which became the nation's largest pay-TV provider when it acquired DirecTV in 2016, is gunning for Time Warner's massive library of content and intellectual property, which it hopes to distribute and sell advertising against. In its SEC filing, AT&T said it has concluded that no licenses will be transferred. (In addition, Time Warner could seek to spin off its FCC licenses so that they are not a part of the deal, analysts have said.)

T-Mobile’s war on overly complicated bills, explained

T-Mobile is trying to simplify how it and other wireless companies sell you phone service — and how they bill you for it. If it works, it could help clear up those headaches you may get while trying to decipher what you're actually paying for month after month.

T-Mobile said that beginning Jan 22, it will only sell a single cellular plan to new customers: a plan that gives you unlimited talk, text and data (though heavy users may still experience reduced Internet speeds during periods of high demand). This plan, known as T-Mobile One, has been around for a while now. But T-Mobile's decision to sell only this plan moving forward is an effort to streamline what can be a confusing jumble in the industry of different-size data buckets, temporary promotional discounts and opaque billing that adds up to billions every year, according to the company. The centerpiece of this new approach is the notion of single-figure billing: You see one number on your bill, and you pay it. That's it — no additional line items for taxes or other fees. As an example, a family of four might previously have paid $40 a line, and then additional miscellaneous charges on top of that, upping the total.

It’s begun: Internet providers are pushing to repeal Obama-era privacy rules

Some of the nation's biggest Internet providers are asking the government to roll back a landmark set of privacy regulations it approved last fall — kicking off an effort by the industry and its allies to dismantle key Internet policies of the Obama years. In a petition filed to federal regulators Jan 2, a top Washington trade group whose members include Comcast, Charter and Cox argued that the rules should be thrown out. “They are unnecessary, unjustified, unmoored from a cost-benefit assessment, and unlikely to advance the Commission’s stated goal of enhancing consumer privacy,” wrote the Internet & Television Association, known as NCTA.

The petition joins a bevy of others from groups representing telecom companies, wireless carriers, tech companies and advertisers. The rules, which passed by a 3-to-2 partisan vote favoring Democrats at the Federal Communications Commission in October, are meant to keep Internet providers such as Comcast, Verizon and others from abusing the behavioral data they collect on customers as they regularly use the Internet.

What could happen to Yahoo if Verizon backs away from its $4.8 billion deal

As rumors swirl about Verizon's plans for acquiring Yahoo, business analysts say the former search giant could see choppier waters ahead if Verizon backs out of the deal, as some observers have suggested it should do. The initial hack could have been written off as a one-time event, analysts say, but the bigger breach will be impossible to ignore. For Verizon, the stakes have risen.

Although it has not raised fresh warning flags over the new disclosure, the telecom firm must balance Yahoo's initial estimated value against the possibility of discovering even more hackings down the road. "It’s like buying a ticking time bomb,"said Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. "You never know when it’s going to blow again, and could keep blowing up time after time." Security experts have criticized Yahoo's use of outdated security technologies to defend user data, and the company's top security official resigned in protest in 2015 when he was cut out of a major decision to allow the federal government to scan customer emails. Backing out of the deal, Kagan said, probably would cause Yahoo's value to decline. But Verizon is more likely to seek a discount than to walk away, according to a mergers and acquisitions lawyer familiar with the transaction who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters of corporate strategy.

Tech companies ‘profit from ISIS,’ allege families of Orlando shooting victims in federal lawsuit

In June, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a horrific spate of violence at a gay nightclub in Orlando (FL). Now, the families of some of the victims are suing Google, Twitter and Facebook, arguing that the tech companies had a role in radicalizing the shooter.

The families are accusing the companies of providing support to the Islamic State, the terrorist organization that appeared to inspire the attack. Although the gunman, Omar Mateen, did not appear to have official ties to the Islamic State, also referred to as ISIS, the victims' families say the group's indirect influence over the gunman is at least partly attributable to its “unfettered” ability to recruit fighters on social media. Through their data-driven business models, companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook even “profit from ISIS postings through advertising revenue,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in a Michigan federal court Dec 19. The families of Tevin Eugene Crosby, Juan Guerrero and Javier Jorge-Reyes are demanding a trial and unspecified monetary compensation. “Without … Twitter, Facebook, and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the lawsuit reads.

Aggressive sales goals pressure T-Mobile workers to sell unwanted services, labor group alleges

T-Mobile employees under pressure to meet sales goals are sometimes driven to mislead customers or to enroll them in services they didn’t ask for, alleges a report from a labor coalition.

In a complaint that Change to Win said they filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the labor group claimed that T-Mobile sets “unrealistic sales targets” that encourage workers to act in ways that may not benefit consumers. The group found that some workers said they felt pressure to add insurance, phone lines and other services that customers didn’t explicitly ask for to meet sales targets and earn commission payments. The findings were based on a review of consumer complaints collected by the Federal Trade Commission, a consumer protection agency, interviews with workers and online surveys of people who identified themselves as T-Mobile employees and customers.

CBS and Viacom’s parent company doesn’t want them to merge, after all

The parent company of CBS and Viacom is urging the two companies not to merge, reversing course on a major proposal that had been portrayed as a potential boon to both companies. In a letter to the boards of CBS and Viacom on Dec 12, National Amusements — a privately held entertainment firm that owns controlling shares of both subsidiaries — said that now was “not the right time” to merge the companies.

Pointing to recent changes in Viacom's management, NAI said it was convinced that the struggling cable and film company boasted “forward-looking thinking” and had a compelling strategic plan. Since 2014, Viacom's stock has fallen roughly 60 percent, while shares of CBS are at about the same level they were two years ago. “CBS continues to perform exceptionally well under Les Moonves,” NAI's letter read, “and we have every reason to believe that momentum will continue on a stand-alone basis.”

How media law could drive a wedge between Donald Trump and the Republican Congress

Soon-to-be House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Rep John Yarmuth (R-KY) want to repeal a long-standing ban on media consolidation, calling it a “disco era” rule that prevents struggling local media outlets from surviving in an increasingly-competitive market for information. Their legislation takes aim at a 41-year-old rule that prohibits a company from owning both a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same market. Critics of media ownership consolidation have included President-elect Donald Trump, who during his campaign lashed out at the proposed deal to combine AT&T with media titan Time Warner. Repealing the media ownership ban is necessary to help smaller voices stay economically competitive, according to proponents.

But critics of consolidation, such as Trump, have worried that the trend could lead to the crowding out of conservative voices. Trump's previously stated opposition to media consolidation raises questions about his position on the bill from Reps Walden and Yarmuth. Although the media cross-ownership ban applies only to ownership of newspapers and broadcast media, not cable, the walls that have traditionally divided these companies into silos are rapidly collapsing.

How AT&T defends its free data policy to skeptical regulators

Parent company AT&T is defending a feature with DirecTV before regulators who said in Nov that they harbor “serious concerns” about the practice, in a fight over how consumers get to experience video on their mobile devices. The program allows consumers to watch as much DirecTV as they want on their AT&T cellphone plans without that consumption eating into customers' monthly data allotments. The exemptions, which AT&T will also apply to its new streaming video app, DirecTV Now, are perfectly good for consumers, the company said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

“Consumers have enthusiastically embraced Data Free TV,” the letter reads. (AT&T owns DirecTV.) As AT&T uses Data Free TV to promote its proprietary services to consumers, other companies could be harmed by the move, critics have said. For example, if Netflix refused to play on AT&T's terms, consumers who watched “Orange is the New Black” on AT&T's data network could find that they were depleting their available data. This would lead to DirecTV having an advantage over Netflix. And the gap would become even more pronounced for smaller media and Internet companies, skeptics say. In its letter, AT&T responded to those claims by arguing that its practice of exempting DirecTV is good for consumers and that it doesn't exclusively benefit its own bottom line. “AT&T makes its sponsored data program available to all content providers on the same terms and conditions,” the letter said. “In fact, AT&T went further in meeting the nondiscrimination requirement than traditional law would require.”

SpaceX just took another step toward delivering superfast Internet from space

SpaceX has asked the government for permission to test what could someday be a massive network of satellites that will beam Internet service down to Earth. The application, filed Nov 16 to the Federal Communications Commission, proposes a fleet of what will eventually include more than 4,400 satellites, covering the United States and the rest of the globe. SpaceX needs regulatory approval from the FCC to use the wireless airwaves that would power this network.

Orbiting more than 700 miles up, the satellites could provide speeds as fast as 1 gigabit per second, per user, according to a technical attachment to the filing. That's as much bandwidth as some premium Internet providers offer entire households. SpaceX would start by launching 800 satellites, the filing said. “The system is designed to provide a wide range of broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, governmental and professional users worldwide,” according to the technical attachment. “Once fully deployed, the SpaceX System will pass over virtually all parts of the Earth’s surface and therefore, in principle, have the ability to provide ubiquitous global service.”

What an iPhone could cost in Trump’s America

Businesses and policymakers are bracing for what could happen under President-elect Donald Trump's trade agenda. President-elect Trump has promised to slap a tax on Chinese goods, possibly as high as 45 percent; he also has said that he will reinvigorate US manufacturing by bringing it home. What would this mean for the goods we buy?

It costs Apple $224.80 to manufacture an iPhone 7, and that doesn't include the cost of R&D, marketing and distribution. A federal markup of 45 percent could drive up that price by more than $100. Apple could keep its retail price for a basic iPhone at $650, but the decision would cut significantly into its margins. Apple declined to comment on whether a tariff would lead to higher prices, saying in a statement that “Apple is responsible for creating more than two million jobs across the United States, from engineers, retail and call center employees to operations and delivery drivers. We work with over 8,000 suppliers from coast to coast and are investing heavily in American jobs and innovation.”

Why President-elect Trump might not block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, after all

Despite his campaign vows to block the deal, President-elect Donald Trump could be forced to take a friendlier stance on AT&T's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner than he initially laid out, analysts say — potentially disappointing supporters who were hoping for a big showdown with the company. Regulators at the Justice Department are likely to examine the proposed deal closely no matter what happens.

But a constellation of factors, from the makeup of President-elect Trump's transition team to the mundane details of antitrust law, may make it difficult for President-elect Trump to oppose the tie-up once he is in office. As a result, one of the earliest decisions to occur on President-elect Trump's watch may be the regulators' approval of the massive acquisition. “Either there's going to be mass tension within his team, or he's going to sit back and let the [establishment conservatives] have their way — in which case, all of his campaign rhetoric on blowing up Comcast and AT&T was just cheap talk,” said Hal Singer, an economist and senior fellow at the George Washington Institute for Public Policy. Analysts say AT&T was likely caught off-guard by President-elect Trump's victory. “They made a calculated bet with the Hillary administration — this is not what they expected,” said Frank Louthan, an industry analyst at Raymond James. “They may still prevail, but that was a shock.”

How Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality and the rest of Obama’s Internet legacy

President-elect Donald Trump could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Barack Obama's Internet agenda and undoing years of effort by lawmakers, tech companies and consumer advocates to limit the power of large, established corporations, analysts say. In particular danger are key initiatives of the Obama years, including network neutrality and a pivotal series of Internet privacy regulations that came along with it.

During the campaign, Trump vowed to “eliminate our most intrusive regulations” and “reform the entire regulatory code.” He has singled out net neutrality as a “top down power grab,” predicting it would allow the government to censor websites. Congressional Republicans have taken aim at net neutrality as well, setting the stage for a concerted effort by President-elect Trump and his House and Senate allies to undermine the policy. And because the government’s consumer privacy policies draw their power from net neutrality, they are likely to fall as well if conservatives successfully gut the rules. At first, President-elect Trump's FCC may simply decide not to enforce the rules. But soon they would take formal steps to strike the rules from the books, said an FCC official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely. Trump is expected to appoint a Republican FCC chair in 2017 who could vote to roll back Wheeler's decisions with the support of the agency's two other conservatives, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly. (Both declined to comment.) It is still unclear whom Trump may nominate as chair, and a Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment

How a single Internet provider could end up making money off you several times over

AT&T's recently announced deal to acquire Time Warner reflects massive changes in media and technology. Although regulators could challenge the acquisition or slap conditions on it that may limit how AT&T can use its new assets, the purchase hints at a future where a single company can monetize the same customer multiple times over, just through the customer's routine use of the Internet. If AT&T succeeds — and that's still a big if — it will be that much closer to turning its subscribers into virtual cash machines, going to them over and over to grow its revenue base. Here are a few ways that could work:

Sell connectivity: At its core, AT&T is a network company. Its main job until now has been to sell you access to communications, such as phone or Internet service. These services act as conduits to the information or media you can find once you're hooked as a subscriber.
Sell content: On top of selling you the network, companies such as AT&T increasingly want to sell you the content that travels over those networks — including shows like “Game of Thrones” or “Westworld.”
Sell advertising: This is the big one. Advertising, particularly of the targeted variety, forms the cornerstone of the entire Internet economy. And Internet providers want a big slice of it.
Sell your data: A company, such as AT&T, could put your data to work for its own advertising business. But it could also benefit by sharing your data with marketing firms and other third parties who can use that information themselves.