Civic Engagement

As citizens increasingly use digital tools to engage with government, federal agencies should weed out fake comments to create a more robust public comment system. If agencies are required to solicit public input, it should take on a form that the agency can easy incorporate into new rules. The Administrative Procedures Act could not have anticipated the digital communications tools available to citizens seven decades later. An updated method of collecting feedback would require commenters to verify their identity, or at least verify they are human.

[Commentary] With each congressional office getting thousands of calls for Network Neutrality and close to zero supporting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai — and with Net Neutrality looking like a real issue in the 2018 elections — we’ve got a shot at passing the resolution. If you haven’t yet called your members of Congress, please do it now. And, yes, the president would need to sign this bill. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, so I’ll just say we welcome that fight.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) that the average voter isn’t likely to be swayed by the fight to restore Net Neutrality protections. But when it comes to the wave of support for Net Neutrality, Chairman Thune is misreading the writing on the wall ... if he’s reading at all. The senator certainly hasn’t been listening to his constituents in South Dakota, who have joined others across the country to write dozens of letters to the editors of local newspapers urging elected officials to support Net Neutrality, or else. “Senators, have you polled us?

Broadband consumer advocates have launched a "Mobile Only Challenge" to show US regulators that cellular data should not be considered an adequate replacement for home Internet service. The awareness campaign comes as the Federal Communications Commission is considering a change to the standard it uses to judge whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.

[Commentary] If there was one bright spot in all this darkness—one series of moments when the web actually did live up to the most optimistic expectations—it was that in the year 2017, women took back the very platforms that have been used to torment and troll them for so long, and built a new-wave women’s movement on top of them. The fundamental issues with social media—the divisiveness, the echo chambers, the lack of nuance, the bots—still plague it, in many cases more than ever. But in 2017, women also reminded us all of the upside of connecting online.

[Commentary]  If you care about preserving network neutrality, the most important thing you could possibly do would be to run for political office on a platform that promises to protect the free and open internet and to roll back regulatory capture by big telecom.

This is the year, friends.  The year when the battle for an Open Internet pits the three self-proclaimed wise men of the Federal Communications Commission against an overwhelming majority of the American people.  Every index I have seen—be it popular poll, volume of pleas to Congress, or expressions of anger toward the FCC—makes it crystal clear that we the people want an open internet and an end to ever-increasing monopoly control of our telecom and media markets.  Most Americans would agree with the great Justice Louis Brandeis: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated i

[Commentary] The so-called social media revolution isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Sites like Twitter and Facebook exacerbate emotions like outrage and fear—and don’t help democracy flourish. Social media too easily bypasses the rational or at least reasonable parts of our minds, on which a democratic public sphere depends. It speaks instead to the emotional, reactive, quick-fix parts of us, that are satisfied by images and clicks that look pleasing, that feed our egos, and that make us think we are heroic.

Roughly 22 million people submitted comments during the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality regulatory proceedings. Though there was widespread fraud in the process (many dead people filed anti-net-neutrality comments), the vast majority of them favored the rules that protected the free and open internet. Jan 4, the FCC released its final rule repealing these protections: A grand total of zero consumer comments were cited.

So many people rightfully believe Washington is not listening to their concerns, fears, and desires. It saddens me that with the release of this decision rolling back net neutrality, you can add the FCC to the list. In this document, the American public can see for themselves the damage done by this agency to internet openness. Going forward, our broadband providers will have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. This is not right.