Cat Zakrzewski

Google, Facebook, and Twitter executives came to Capitol Hill to testify about election security. Instead, they faced a grilling about whether their platforms are biased against conservatives. A string of Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee skipped questions about how the companies were tackling disinformation campaigns or preventing Russians from purchasing political ads on their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Sens Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are criticizing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to greenlight the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint -- the latest sign that antitrust issues are core to many of their 2020 platforms. Sens Sanders and Klobuchar say a merger of the telecommunications giants would leave consumers with fewer choices. Sen Klobuchar, who is expected to publish a book on antitrust issues later in 2019, said the deal could harm competition.

Accusing Twitter and Facebook of suppressing conservative voices, Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) floated an overhaul to a key law that protects Internet platforms from legal liability for content posts on their sites, breaking up the companies, or even charging them with fraud. His three-part playbook: 

House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) reintroduced The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, making the case that the legislation is needed to level the playing field between tech giants and local news publishers. "It grows out of a recognition that we need to do something to give local media, local news publishers the ability to survive," Chairman Cicilline said. He argues that as ad revenue shifts from news publishers to Facebook and Google, it's time for Congress to intervene.

As privacy scandals mount at firms such as Facebook, Presidential candidate Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is positioning her data tax as a way to make technology companies think twice about how they share and profit from users’ data. But implementing such an idea might be difficult, experts noted. Taxing data means you have to know what such information is worth, for instance. Former Facebook employee Antonio García Martínez says data is often compared to oil, but that's a poor analogy because unlike oil that has a clear price, the ultimate value of data is unknown.

Freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), 39, (the country's youngest senator) is swiftly emerging as one of the Repulican Party's toughest critics of Big Tech. At a March 12 privacy hearing, he slammed Google for collecting people's location data on Android phones -- even after they try to disable the tracking function. Sen Hawley wants Google to give consumers a clear way to opt out of invasive location tracking. He says many members of the committee — including Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — told him they were not aware that Google tracks people at this level.

The Save the Internet Act, a measure from congressional Democrats to restore Obama-era network neutrality rules, is most likely dead on arrival. Though the bill has a strong chance of passing a Democratic-controlled House, it’s not a priority in a Republican-led Senate. It’s even less likely that President Donald Trump would sign a law reversing his administration’s decision.

Some Federal Trade Commission officials are calling the agency's $5.7 million fine against Musical.ly (now known as TikTok) for children’s privacy violations a “big win.” But critics say it highlights how Washington regulators aren’t doing enough to keep kids safe online. “While this fine may be a historic high for a [Children's Online Privcacy Protection Act (COPPA)] violation, it is not high enough for the harm that is done to children and to deter violations of the law in the future by other companies,” Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) said.

The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to be the US government’s top Internet privacy cop. But a new Government Accountability Office report report raises questions about whether the agency has the resources and authority it needs to protect consumers. In the past decade, the FTC has filed just 101 enforcement actions regarding Internet privacy. While nearly all of the actions resulted in settlements that required companies to take action, in most cases the FTC didn’t have the authority to issue fines.

Snopes, one of Facebook's high-profile fact-checking partners, and the Associated Press are not renewing its contract with the social network -- dealing a blow to a program Facebook executives have said is a key line of defense in their fight against disinformation. It was no longer practical for Snopes to participate in the partnership, said Snopes Vice President of Operations Vinny Green, because having such a high-profile deal with one company prevented Snopes from doing fact-checking work around the rest of the Internet.