Tony Romm

In states like Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington, educators say they are feeling firsthand the sting of the digital divide — the historically hard-to-erase gap between those who have speedy, modern-day Web connections and those who do not.

US Attorney General William Barr blasted big tech, raising the specter that Silicon Valley might soon be held accountable for a wide array of dangerous, harmful content that critics say has flourished on their sites and services. At an event that laid bare tech’s broad troubles — including the spread of terrorism, illicit drug sales and child sexual exploitation online — AG Barr said it may be time for the government to seek sweeping changes to a key portion of federal law, known as Section 230, that long has spared tech companies from liability for content posted by their users.

The Federal Trade Commission said it would probe past mergers by Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, seeking to study the ways that tech giants gobbled up their rivals — and if their acquisitions may have skirted federal antitrust laws. The new effort by the FTC will require all five companies to provide information about the smaller players they've purchased over the past 10 years, including documents for deals that may not have been large enough to warrant deep, closer inspection by government watchdogs at the time.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pledged that her campaign would not share falsehoods or promote fraudulent accounts on social media, part of a new plan to battle back disinformation and hold Facebook, Google and Twitter “responsible” for its spread.

A Massachusetts judge has ordered Facebook to turn over data about thousands of apps that may have mishandled its users’ personal information, rejecting the tech company’s earlier attempts to withhold the key details from state investigators.

Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google took a public lashing at a congressional hearing at the University of Colorado in Boulder (CO), where some of their smaller rivals, including Sonos and Tile, pleaded with federal lawmakers to take swift action against Big Tech. Democratic and Republican lawmakers at times appeared stunned as they heard tales of technology giants wielding their massive footprints as weapons, allegedly copying smaller competitors’ features or tweaking their algorithms in ways that put new companies at a costly disadvantage.

YouTube said it is rolling out new protections for children viewing videos on its site, an effort to satisfy federal regulators who in 2019 fined the company tens of millions of dollars over alleged privacy violations. The changes, which include limitations on data collection and advertising, are a step toward addressing concerns from advocacy groups who have complained the Google-owned company has run afoul of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which forbids tracking and targeting users 12 and under.

The fight to reinstate network neutrality rules could return to federal court, if public-interest advocates, consumer groups, and tech companies including Mozilla get their way [as well as the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society]. The groups asked a panel of judges to rehear a case that upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to repeal the government’s open-Internet rules.

Free-speech advocates are challenging the Trump Administration’s policy of requiring foreigners to list their social media accounts as part of their visa applications, alleging in a lawsuit filed Dec 5 that the policy violates federal law and runs afoul of the Constitution.

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) led Sens Biran Schatz (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Amy Klobuarch (D-MN) in unveiling the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA), which proposes tough new punishments for Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley tech giants that mishandle their users’ personal data. The sweeping new online privacy bill aims to provide people their “Miranda rights” for the digital age. Rights consumers would gain from COPRA include: