Pew’s “After the Fact” podcast host, Dan LeDuc, spoke with Kathryn de Wit, manager of Pew’s broadband research initiative, to hear about the challenges that communities face in bridging the digital divide.

There are between 21 and 162 million Americans without access to broadband. The vast majority of these unconnected Americans are in rural areas. This problem, however, affects communities of all types and locations, including urban, suburban, rural, and remote communities. There are parts of those communities that can have excellent connections while others either have slow internet or no internet connection at all. Unfortunately, connections don't just fly through the air. Infrastructure development across multiple policy areas and multiple levels of government is at the core of this challenge. The immediate impact of having a connection is that it offers opportunities that didn't exist before. Many Americans staying inside under stay-at-home orders and living in well-connected communities don’t consider the time of day they’re getting online, or whether they need to kick someone else off the internet to finish their homework. But for communities that have slow connections or no connections, that's a normal part of life. They can't access health care remotely. They don't have the luxury of ordering food and supplies online.

On April 3, 2020, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to ensure that as the FCC begins the mapping efforts required under the Broadband DATA Act (which President Donald Trump signed on March 23, 2020), that the FCC include community anchor institutions such as health care facilities, schools, and libraries.

On May 27, Chairman Pai responded by referencing the August 2019 Digital Opportunity Data Collection (DODC) Report and Order, aimed at generating more granular and more precise broadband maps through the creation of the DODC. "Accordingly, under the Report and Order, a crowd-sourcing portal will allow individual consumers, as well as state, local, and Tribal government entities, including the community anchor institutions you reference in your letter, to submit public input on the accuracy of the data on the public fixed broadband availability map." He wrote, "In closing, I would reiterate it is vital for Congress to provide the FCC as soon as possible with the appropriations necessary to implement the Broadband DATA Act. Right now, the FCC does not have the funding to carry out the Act, and given the Act's prohibition on the Universal Service Administrative Company performing this mapping work, if Congress does not act soon, this well-intentioned legislation will have the unfortunate effect of delaying rather than expediting the development of better broadband maps."

On April 23, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission proposed to adopt rules and a framework for establishing the 5G Fund for Rural America. To account for the relative costs of serving areas that vary in terrain characteristics and potential business cases, the FCC proposed to apply an adjustment factor to make the most difficult areas to serve more attractive at auction in order to encourage more bidding for these areas. The adjustment factor also would be used to transition legacy high-cost support to 5G Fund support. The FCC's Office of Economics and Analytics and the Wireline Competition Bureau now seek comment on proposed adjustment factor values and on three economic analyses that have informed the FCC's proposed adjustment factor values.

More than 140 scientists funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) — a philanthropic organization founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan — sent Zuckerberg a letter calling the social media site’s lax policy enforcement around inaccurate information and incendiary language contrary to CZI’s mission to “build a healthier, just, and more inclusive future.”The list of signatories includes professors from more than 60 leading research institutions, including Harvard University, Stanford University, and University of California San Francisco (UCSF), as well as one Nobel laureate. “As scientists, we are dedicated to investigating ways to better our world,” the letter says. “The spread of deliberate misinformation and divisive language is directly antithetical to this goal and we are therefore deeply concerned at the stance Facebook has taken,” on policing content. The letter calls out one policy stance in particular: Zuckerberg’s decision to allow President Trump to post, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” on Facebook’s platform, a reference to the protests around the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. The scientists argue that the message clearly flouts the company’s rules against inciting violence.

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will review its content policies after facing widespread backlash, including from its own employees, over the decision to leave up controversial posts from President Donald Trump. Facebook will look at improving content policies while also building products to advance racial justice, the CEO said in response to the protests in the United States. 

“I know many of you think we should have labeled the President’s posts in some way last week,” Zuckerberg said in a lengthy Facebook post, referring to his decision not to remove inflammatory content by President Trump containing the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, which has racist origins and was censored by Twitter. “We’re going to review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions,” Zuckerberg’s statement continued. “Our current policy is that if content is actually inciting violence, then the right mitigation is to take that content down – not let people continue seeing it behind a flag. There is no exception to this policy for politicians or newsworthiness. I think this policy is principled and reasonable, but I also respect a lot of the people who think there may be better alternatives, so I want to make sure we hear all those ideas. I started meeting with the team yesterday and we’re continuing the discussion soon.”

Facebook removed two networks of accounts linked to white supremacy groups, but hasn’t seen any attempted foreign interference on its platforms related to the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the US targeting police brutality. Attorney General William Barr said that the US government has seen evidence of “foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.” But Facebook officials said  they haven’t detected foreign influence on the social network. “We have not yet seen or received evidence of foreign interference or coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting the protests,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook. The company, however, said it removed dozens of accounts linked to two white supremacy groups, Proud Boys and American Guard, which were “organizing around the protests.” The two groups had previously been banned from Facebook, but resurfaced.