Ownership

This report features global insights and perspectives across five issues: Privacy and security, Openness, Digital inclusion, Web literacy and Decentralization. How healthy is the Internet? In most cases it’s not a simple question. Certainly, there are some straightforward indicators to watch. Things are getting a bit better in areas like: access, affordability, and encryption. And they are getting worse in: censorship, online harassment, and energy use. Simple indicators miss the complexity that comes with global ecosystems like the Internet.

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on the subjects listed below on Tuesday, April 17, 2018:

[Speech] As the media marketplace evolved, the Federal Communications Commission failed to keep pace. Rather than removing regulations that became outdated, the FCC demonstrated a tendency to tack on yet another regulation or filing requirement. These outdated rules have taken up too many dollars and too much manpower—resources that could be going to newsgathering or upgrading facilities so broadcasters can better serve their local communities.

As Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress, a look at what lawmakers can and can’t do about Facebook.

Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have introduced the Privacy Bill of Rights bill, the Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions (CONSENT) Act, which would require edge providers to obtain opt-in consent to use, share or sell users' personal info. It would not extend opt-in to data collection, but would require edge providers to notify users of such collection. The bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to establish online protections for "customers" of online edge providers, including Facebook and Google.

What will happen after Zuckerberg’s testimony?

Facebook has said that political data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested the public profile data of up to 87 million of its users, including their political beliefs, interests and friends’ information. Now the company has revealed that the extent of the harvesting went even further — it included people’s private messages, too.

The Federal Communications Commission has historically been over-obsessed and too reliant on the belief that the number of broadcast voices in a market is directly tied or correlated to the issue of license ownership, which is a false assumption. I firmly believe that our ownership rules have not worked. It’s why I was so pleased to support the Chairman’s order [in 2017] to eliminate some of these rules.

Critics have claimed that Sinclair — a company with close ties to the Trump Administration and conservative politicians — is pushing its stations away from local coverage and toward a partisan brand of political reporting on national politics. In new research, we find evidence that that appears to be the case.

[Commentary] Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in Washington is a voluntary, one-off reaction to a scandal. It should be the start of the conversation, not the end: Facebook, like every company that collects and stores personal data, must be made permanently accountable to American political and regulatory institutions. Electronic media, social media and other innovations have created new challenges for law enforcement and national security; they have also helped to increase polarization and undermine trust in public institutions, in America and everywhere else.